Reviews for Math and Magic in Wonderland

Some wonderful reviews have started coming in for "Math and Magic in Wonderland".  Please check out the reviews and follow these fantastic blogs:

"Puns, poetry, and plenty of puzzles. Tangrams, tessellations, truth-tellers and liars. History tidbits and many classics of recreational mathematics. 

No matter how challenging the topic, the book never talks down to the reader."

Review from Denise Gaskins, author of "Let's Play Math":
https://denisegaskins.com/2016/07/11/review-math-magic-wonderland/

Read Aloud Books for Ages 2-5

I've always enjoyed reading aloud to my children.  When they were young, our reading sessions were more about spending quality time with my little ones and instilling a love of books in them.  Recently, I feel like the kids have not just been passively listening to the stories, but actually living them.  They played Aslan versus The White Witch (from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) for weeks.  When one twin is being particularly demanding, the other tells her to stop being "Veruca Salt" (from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).  The other day, their plastic toy horses were being used to reenact the barn fire in Black Beauty.  I could go on and on (not including all the literature-inspired artwork they have produced).  As a bibliophile myself, it warms my heart to see my children feel such a connection with the books they read.

Three years ago, when I was looking for ideas for read alouds for younger children, I looked to blogs and Facebook for recommendations.  I've been keeping track of the books we've read both for myself and also with the hopes of inspiring other families to create read-aloud traditions with their children.  Here's the list so far...

101 Chapter Books to Read Aloud to My Kids

It's no secret that I love to read.  When we visited a furniture store last weekend, the girls pointed out every (fake) stack of books that was displayed, yelling "Mommy, look at the books - your favorite!".  I've been reading chapter books aloud to the twins since they were 2.5, and it's still something special we enjoy every day.  I had assumed that when the girls learned to read they would be eagerly seeking out books and enjoy reading on their own, but that didn't quite happen.  They're technically amazing readers for their age, but don't have the passion for independent reading quite yet (I need to remember they are only 4.5 years old).  So for now I'm just reading lots and lots of book aloud to them (and starting to include my 2.5 year old boy too, although he doesn't quite have the attention span yet and wanders away).   I love being able to share classics from my own childhood with my children, as well as discover some "new-to-me" books as well.  Amazon recently released its updated list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.  Since surfing Amazon is my "hobby" (yes, really!), I was inspired to come up with a list of 101 read aloud chapter books for kids (33 that we've already read, and the rest on my "wish list").  Here goes...

Homeschool Preschool - Weeks 29 & 30

 

L and E are 3.5 years old.  If you follow this blog and have been wondering what has happened to my plan of doing a book-related activity every day in March, well we've actually been sticking to it.  However, my kids have been doing so great with our Homeschool Preschool sessions lately (2-3 times a day for about an hour each session), that I've kept the book activities pretty simple.  Sometimes we read a book and then watch a YouTube movie about the subject, or complete a puzzle on the theme, etc.. nothing that would be interesting enough to blog about.  Here's a little glimpse of what we've been working on in preschool over the past two weeks..

Alphabet Soup {Carmine: A Little More Red}

I read somewhere that children's book authors are sent a list of words (mostly sight-words) that they are 'allowed' to use in their books.  I'm not sure if this is true or not, but it makes me sad. That's why I'm always excited to discover a new book that will expand my children's vocabulary.  I absolutely love the book Carmine: A Little More Red by Melissa Sweet which has taught my 3-year-olds some wonderful new words.  The story starts out by explaining that Carmine's grandmother taught her how to read by making alphabet soup.  It then proceeds to retell the story of Little Red Riding Hood where each paragraph highlights one word that starts with each letter of the alphabet.   For our activity today we made our own version of alphabet soup...

Top Ten Chapter Books to Read to My Kids in 2013

Today I'm joining Top Ten Tuesday from The Broke and the Bookish and sharing my top 10 books I resolve to read in 2013.  I'm sure I'll be reading grown-up books, too, but I have no idea what those will be (whatever is free on Kindle), so I'd rather list the chapter books that I'd like to read aloud to the kiddos..

Type a Story - Reading, Spelling, and Creativity

I can't take credit for this activity, because my daughter L (3 years old) came up with it almost all on her own.  My girls typed up sentences (with some help), printed them out, cut out the words, glued the words back together in the correct order on another piece of paper and illustrated their stories.  If you want to see the final results, read on...

Homeschool Preschool Week 10

L and E are 39 months old.  This week's preschool time was less organized than usual due to Halloween and the fact that I have a nasty head cold.  Rather than our typical math and reading lessons, we spent most of the week trying on different costumes and going on imaginary adventures, rediscovering games that have been sitting in the closet for a while, building things, and playing miscellaneous logic/memory games that I made up...

Homeschool Preschool - Week 9

L and E are 39 months old.  This was a really good week for us, but not without its ups and downs.  There were some days when the girls were begging for more and more learning activities, and other days where they were whining and fighting so much that it didn't feel like we got anything done.  That's fine - they're only 3..  Here's our weekly summary...

Flashcard Storytelling Game

I want to share a game that the girls have been asking for all week.  It reinforces both reading skills and creativity/imagination. All you need is a set of flashcards that have a word on one side and a picture of the object on the other side (I got ours for $1 at Target), or you could make your own with index cards.  Here's how we play..

L's Magic Word Box

L (38 months) is getting better at sounding out CVC words, but she goes through periods where she resists reading so I have to be creative with reading activities and cater them to her interests.  In the girls' many creative dramatic play sessions, L often likes to pretend that she is "Magic L-" as she waves her wand and casts magic spells.  This gave me an idea for a very simple reading/writing game we've been doing -  L's Magic Word Box....

Phonics Jumping Game (with Video!)

This morning the girls (37 months) helped me use painters tape to make letters on the floor.  Then we played a phonics reading (and jumping!) game that I made up.  It was so much fun that we ended up playing for over an hour and L forgot that she was on a reading-strike!  I even caught one of the rounds on video.  Here's how to play...

Intro to Writing Stories

After doing some painting last week, I asked L and E (3 years old) if they wanted to write stories about their artwork. I tried not to provide too much guidance - I just wrote what they told me to write. Here's what they came up with...

Tapping Syllables

One of our file folder games is a syllable-sorting activity which is just a collection of cards with various pictures, and a little sorting mat to identify whether each word has 1, 2, or 3 syllables.  If I had ink in my printer, I could have created these cards myself (or you could use stickers as well).  To make the activity more fun, I brought out our collection of percussion instruments and we played a bunch of early learning games..

Beyond Picture Books: Longer Real-Alouds for Preschoolers

My kids still love picture books.  Picture books have wonderful illustrations to explore and discuss, rhymes that are terrific for phonemic awareness, and they are just fun to read together, especially when you only have time (or patience) for a couple minutes of reading.  My girls (who just turned 3), however, have started begging for more and more stories and I found myself reading as many as 30 picture books to them every day (we usually read 4 times a day, anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour!).  So I found some longer books to read aloud to them....

Tricycle Reading Game

For the twins' 3rd birthdays, they each received adorable tricycles from my parents.  They've been happily riding them in a loop through the living room and kitchen every day (and are getting fantastically good at turning the tight corners!).  Since the girls (especially L) are demonstrating a 'sweet spot' for phonics at the moment, I reinforced what we've been learning by creating this game for them...

Preschool Learning Activities

Here's a quick summary of some of the learning activities I've been doing with L and E (3 years old).  I've been toying with the idea of trying some more structured 'homeschool preschool' time for the girls, but I realized that we fill most of our day with early learning activities, anyway.  I'd rather keep the structure really flexible for now.  I think the key is to plan enough ideas for things to do each day that when the girls ask for an 'activity', I don't have to scramble to pull something together.  For example, for our daily art activities, if I pull out all the materials I need the night before, I don't have to keep the kids waiting while I look for everything we need for the craft.  So here are some of the recent activities I've put together...

15 Activities with an Alphabet Puzzle Mat

When the girls were 5 months old, they received a Foam Letter & Number Floor Mat Puzzle.  It was useful to keep them from getting hurt as they learned to crawl, stand, and walk, but they soon discovered that they could take the pieces out (and throw them / put them in their mouth), so it was retired shortly after their 1st birthday.  Recently we re-discovered this puzzle mat when cleaning out a storage closet.  I was debating whether to even keep it, but L and E (35 months) have been asking for their Alphabet Mat every single day this week.  Accordingly, I've been making up tons of new activities with this toy, and wanted to share some of these ideas...

Early Learning Fun with Unit Blocks

We have a big tub of unit blocks (each is one centimeter square, weight one gram) which I've been using with the girls when we play with our bucket scale (see our Blocks in Socks activity).  This morning while I was trying to catch up on some work, I let L and E (33 months) do some exploration and play with these unit blocks.  Later, I joined them and made up lots of fun math, spatial vitalization, and fine motor skills activities.....

Alphabet Boxes

I first learned about alphabet boxes here on the Counting Coconuts blog.  The concept is that you have boxes or drawers representing different letters of the alphabet and put tiny objects that start with each letter in the correct box...

I'm constantly collecting little trinkets for the girls in the $1 section of Target, craft store clearance sections and other places, so I've built up quite a collection of miscellaneous objects.  I put some alphabet boxes together for the twins a while ago when they had just turned two years old (they're now 33 months old).  At first they just wanted to play with the small objects inside instead of doing anything alphabet related (I can't really blame them - using the small cup and fork to feed the small animals is a lot more fun than sounding out words), but now that they are a bit older I've been taking the alphabet boxes back out again to work on our phonemic awareness and the girls are being a lot more receptive to organizing the objects by starting sounds..