Reggie the Rhyming Rhino

Scholastic has a great website for practicing rhymes. There are topic choices for working with the rhymes such as words at a store, restaurant, zoo, or museum.

Once you choose your topic, the rhyming practice begins. Reggie, the rhyming Rhino, gives a word and 3 possible rhyming words. Nothing too hard.

This is how I use the site with Brooke:
1. I say, "This is a light. Does light rhyme with kite? Does light rhyme with bed? Does light rhyme with flower?"
2. If the answer is the first choice, I'll say, "Yep, light rhymes with kite. But let's check the other answers. Does light rhyme with bed? No. Does light rhyme with flower? No. Yep, you are right, light rhymes with kite.
3. Then I have Brooke repeat it by saying, "Light rhymes with kite."
4. I have control over the mouse and will then click on the answer. The site then says, "Light rhymes with kite." for another auditory reinforcement.

We only play for 5 or so minutes at a time but since the site is so easy to accesses, we can do it anytime she is ready to rhyme

Practice rhyming with Reggie.

Listening Game

Objectives:
a. to identify common household sounds

Points to Remeber:

1. Can your child close her eyes and identify sounds around the house--a door shutting, footsteps, water running, silverware being put away? Make sure she can before moving on to other phonemic games.

Lesson:

1. There are different Listening Games. We have Listening Lotto: Sounds at Home

2. The game comes with a CD of 29 common household sounds.

3. Choose a lotto card and start the CD. Each sound is played 2-3 times. When your child identifies the sound, have her place a marker on the picture.

4. Each lotto card is different so there are opportunities to hear and identify quite a lot of sounds.

5. We play until the card is full.

Modifications:

1. Make sure you are pointing out sounds to your child and helping her to identify them in everyday life. For example, when you hear a siren approaching, point out the sound and ash if she hears it. Then ask her what she thinks the sound might be.

Table Learning

These are some of the other things we do during the day. I call this time of our day Table Learning since the kids are at the table with me to help and instruct them.

Learning Poster I use this teaching poster every morning. On it I have an envelope to stick our home0made letter books, a letter poem, the Awanna memory verse for the week, our nursery rhyme, and a spot for letter flashcards, number flashcards, shape flashcards, and color flashcards.

Letters

We complete a Capital Letter craft for each letter. I print out a block letter and fill it with items that begin with the sound. For letter Nn, we filled it with numbers. Letter Ll we filled with ladybug stickers.

Sounds and Auditory Activities

Here we are sorting itsy-bitsy miniatures by beginning consonant sounds

Writing

Letter hunt from confessions of a preschooler

a coloring sheet from first schools

a d'nealian handwritting worksheet

a learning letter sounds worksheet

a What begins with ___? worksheet

Patterns

Sometimes we do patterns at the table before give it to the kids as a magnet tray.

Thinking Skills

In this activity, we are looking for one that is different.

Computer Skills

Big Brother

Fill-In the Rhyming Words

Can your child fill-in rhyming words:

‘There was an old woman who lived in a shoe; She had so many children she didn’t know what to d__’?

"Baa Baa Black Sheep have you any wool? Yes, sir Yes sir Three bags f___."

"Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the cl____."

Little Bo Peep lost her sh___."

Provide your child with the beginning sound so that she will begin to recognize the initial sounds in rhyming words.

Listening Awareness

Listening Awareness Have child close eyes and listen for three sounds you make. Ex: Parent claps hands, snaps fingers, and stomps feet. Child opens eyes. Parent says, "First you heard ______. In the middle you heard_____. And last you heard ______." Child fills in blank. Continue listening game using the following: animal sounds (moo, oink, quack) color words familiar items (tree, grass, truck) letters of alphabet sounds of alphabet "b-a-t"

Kids Clix - Speech Sound Discrimination

Kids Clix is a listening program for listening to the sounds in speech. You can download the program for free from The Hearing Journey.

Once downloaded, your child will begin with a placement test. There are 50 items on the placement test that assess 10 levels. They suggest you begin at the lowest level where you scored 3 out of 5 or less. For Brooke this category is "initial manner" meaning words that have different beginning sounds but the same middle and ending sounds like:

pea, tea, key (voiceless sounds) or bay, day, gay (voiced sounds)

Since this is a computer voice instead of face-to-face human voice, it is more difficult for children with hearing loss.

We will being the program at Level 5: First consonants different by manner of production.

What does the word 'sam" start with?

Play games with the beginning sounds in words. Give the child a word and see if she can tell you the sound that the word starts with. For example,"What does the word “sam” start with?" and your child would respond with /sssss/. Help the child by saying the word slowly. Help him learn to hear these sounds. Since this is the first time we are trying this activity, we started with the sounds that can be stretched out (such as m, s, f, l, n, r) and we avoided the blended consonants (br, sm, fl, sh) that are much more difficult to segment (for example give the word ‘big’ not ‘broom’). Be careful not to ask the child for the name of the letter, but the sound of the letter. For some words, Brooke would say M instead of the sound /mmmmm/. Of course, that is a correct answer but I would refocus her on the sound by saying, "Yes, M makes the /mmmmmm/ sound in the word mitten." Try these words: Scooby Doo sit snack sailboat sun Superman sunflower six moth mouse motorcycle monkey mitten moon mop fox four fan fire fork feet fish five leaf ladybug lollipop lemon lamb lips lion nail net nose nest numbers nut needle rabbit rose ring rain rainbow rat rake rhino raccoon Then try these sounds that are the earliest to develop and you child most likely has mastered: p, h, w, b, t, d (the /h/ is a difficult sound to hear so keep that in mind) Then these sounds which are harder speech sounds: k, g, v, y

Shaking Eggss

objective: a. listen to a variety of sounds b. compare the sounds and find the 2 that match Points to remember: 1. Listening and recognizing sounds is an important step in learning to recognize sounds in words.

Lesson:

1. Fill 12 eggs with 6 different objects so that there are 2 of each object. I used marshmallows, pennies, rocks, pom poms, bells, and macaroni.

2. Place the eggs in the carton. In the picture I have the eggs organized by color, but the sounds are not in the same color eggs. For example, the macaroni is in a purple egg and an orange egg.

3. Give your child 6 eggs, each a different sound. Listen to each one at a time. Set those eggs on the table and leave the 6 matching eggs in the carton.

4. Give your child 1 egg from the carton and have her listen to it. Then ask her to match it to one egg on the table that sounds the same.

5. Once she has found the match, open the eggs and look to see if they are the same.

6. Celebrate!

Here is a video of Kate and Brooke playing with the eggs. This is after we did it a few times and they knew the objects inside.

Modifications:

1. Switch out the objects and play again.

2. Set out all 12 eggs at one time and have your child find the matches - this is much harder since there are 11 options to choose from.

Foochie and the Easter Bunny

objective:

a. to follow directions with 3 or more critical elements

b. to demonstrate understanding of location vocabulary such as next to, on top, in front of, etc.

Points to Remember:

1. You will need 5 jelly beans: red, yello, purple, green and black

2. You will need to download this from The Listening Room before they change activities.

Lesson: 1. Have your child start as the Listener. I choose a card and without letting Brooke see, I describe where to place the jellybeans with sentences such as, "The purple jelly bean is in front of the Easter Bunny. The black jellybean is on top of the doghouse." 2. When all the candies are in the proper place, check the card to make sure it is correct. 3. Have your child take a turn describing where to place the jellybeans while you place them on the scene

Modifications:

1. Set a timer and try to get all the jellybeans placed before the timer rings.

2. Download the game here: Foochie and the Easter Bunny

Little Miss Muffett

Little Miss Muffett

Act it out! This was so fun! The kids really enjoyed acting out this rhyme and it was so easy to do! All I needed was a stool, bowl and spoon!

Sequence the Nursery Rhyme - We used some sequence cards to help Brooke re-tell the story of Little Miss Muffett. Re-telling is a valuable auditory skill and using the cards helped her to remember. I asked her to re-tell each card and then to re-tell the whole nursery rhyme.

United States Puzzle

Another Puzzle As you know, I am not a fam of puzzles but this one was great! Here is out last puzzle. I helped get the outside pieces together and the kids did the entire middle all by themselves! Jake likes to glue to pieces together, frame them, and hang it on his wall.

/m/ and /o/

objective:
a. to recognize beginning sounds
b. to sort objects according to beginning sounds
points to remember:
1. make sure you review with your child the letter name and letter sound before they begin sorting.
2. use a fun container to hold the objects...today we used an Easter basket since it is close to Easter - it just makes it more fun for the kids
3. Write out the letters on paper for your child to sort...we use sandpaper letters.
Lesson:
1. Use your itsy-bitsy miniatures and gather objects beginning with 2 sounds. Today we did /m/ and /o/
2. One at a time, have your child pull out an object, say the name of the object, and put it under the correct letter.

3. Help your child as needed. Here is a video of Kate (Brooke was not interested in being videotaped so Kate offered to help)

Resurection Eggs

I use Resurrection Eggs to teach my children about Easter. We have had our about 3 years and are missing the spear (but found a sword to replace it). This is a great way to teach kids about Easter and for them to be able to use the objects to re-tell the story back to you. My set came with a book called Benjamin's Box. I read from the book (summarizing a little) as the kids open the eggs.

The kids will set out all the items from the eggs as I read.

Then use the items to re-tell me the Easter story. By re-telling the story using the objects, I know they understand.

Here are 2 great blogs that gives even more ideas for how to use your Resurection Eggs:

http://totallytots.blogspot.com/search/label/Easter http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/RaisingRockStarsEaster.html

Rest Time 2

Every afternoon is Rest Time at our house.
As I have shown before, we have 3 carpets for Rest Time activities. The carpets go into the closet after Rest Time and come out for Rest Time. Here are some more of our Rest Time activites.
To see an explanation of what we do, check out the previous blog post.
On the blue flower is an alphabet puzzle, the red cartpet has a princess castle with Princess dolls and the yellow carpet has magnetic princesses to dress up.....love us some Princesses!

Step on the letter

objective:
1. recite the alphabet correctly
Points to remember:
1. Brooke has always struggled with the alphabet and we work on it almost daily. For her, most of the letters all sound the same such as B, C, D, E, G, P, S, T, V, Z all have the /e/ sound.
2. It would be like me trying to learn 26 random sounds that only have very slight differences and remember them in order, so I am okay with her still continuing to struggle.
3. This activity makes you say the alphabet more slowly which helps her to hear to sounds more clearly.
Lesson:
1. Lay your foam letters on the floor.
2. Put them in alphabetical order. Have your child help as much as possible. Brooke is able to identify most of her letters.
3. We sing the alphabet song after we add every 3-4 letters. Just more repetition.
4. Once the letters are in order, have your child step on each letter as it is sung.

Modifications:
1. Use Puzzle Pieces or Flashcards for stepping too!
2. Here are a few sites we use to reinforce the alphabet song. Alphablocks Alphabet and Starfall

April Fool's Day Lunch

I loved making our April Fool's Lunch! I bought Teddy Grahams, Oreos and Rice Krispy Treats. I carefully opened the bags and replaced the snacks with carrots, sandwich and strawberries. Then using double-sided tape, closed the bags again.

Everyone also got some Fakin' and Eggs: eggs are made from white chocolate and a yellow m&m. the bacon is made from Tootsie Rolls and Carmels.