Now that Miss G is in First Grade {first grade!!} she’s given a new list of sight words to take home each week. At the moment, the expectation is that she’s able to read them aloud, but since she’s already quite advanced with her reading, we’ve been practicing spelling them too. She loves sitting down with mama to do her ‘homework’, but it goes without saying that we keep it lighthearted, hands-on, and FUN. One of our very favourite ways to do so? Practicing sight words with a salt tray!
If you know us well, you know we loooove play dough. We almost always have 3 or 4 play dough kits on hand and for the past several years, they’ve been something Miss G has regularly taken out and played with. That being said, we’ve sort of been on a play dough break recently… Miss G has other things she’s super passionate about at the moment {mainly ‘inventing’ and reading – always reading} and with her being in school full days this year, I honestly just find that there’s not a lot of extra time in our days {*insert sad face here*}. That being said, we’ve recently been all about apples and apple trees, and when Miss G asked about when the different stages of an apple tree’s life cycle occur, I figured it would be fun to explore the different seasons with some play dough and simple play dough mats.
After our rhyming pairs matching game, Miss G asked to play another homemade game this afternoon. With dinnertime nearing and a baby boy who needed one of his mama’s arms, it needed to be something super quick and easy to pull together, and that’s how this very simple coin sorting tray came about. Admittedly, it’s more of an activity than a game, but Miss G didn’t mind in the least. It meant that she got to play with money, which she’s been super interested in lately. That being said, since she’s spent the majority of her life living in the Middle East, Canadian currency is not something she knows much about just yet, so this was perfect for her.
One thing I’ve been trying my best to do since Sam’s come home is making a little time each day for Grae and I to do something fun together. Just the two of us, with her having my full attention. It’s not always easy as baby brother tends to be the type of baby who doesn’t love being put down, but so far we’ve been making it work. By request of Miss G, we’ve done mini manicures, we’ve cooked up some yummy treats, we’ve taken our babies for a walk outside {okay, so that one involved Mr. Sam, but by her choice}, and we’ve done some art.
Without a doubt, one of my most used resources in my Kindergarten and Grade One classes was the stack of coloured plastic plates filled with salt that I kept in my teacher’s cupboard. They were the simplest thing ever – literally plastic plates in a bright colour {aqua and gold always seemed to be the favourites} filled with a very thin layer of salt I’d bought at the dollar store. Despite their simplicity, we used them constantly… When practicing letter and number formation, when learning to draw shapes, when learning about different types of lines used in art, and when doing literacy and math centres… The list could go on.
Numbers are currently HUGE in our house. Writing numbers, counting, skip counting, subtraction, dividing things into equal groups, addition… You name it, Grae loves it. {And of course I love that she loves it. ☺}
After seeing what a hit our recent play dough subtraction smash activity was, I immediately starting thinking of other fun, hands-on activities I could provide Miss G with to foster her love of exploring numbers {and subtraction in particular}. I’m fairly certain the play dough activity was so well-liked because of the smashing aspect, so I wanted something just as unique and fun. Simply taking manipulatives away from a pile was not going to cut it. {Well, not for me at least.} I racked my brain for interesting ways to take things away, until I thought of eating! G loves all sorts of healthy foods and is pretty much constantly hungry currently {hello, growth spurt!}, so snack subtraction of some sort was a perfect fit.
Since a home recycling service doesn’t exist here in Kuwait, I save all sorts of food packing items, hoping to find them some sort of second purpose before they end up in the bin. My hoarding usually serves me well and I’m almost always able to help out when fellow community members put out calls for recyclables to use in their classrooms, but sometimes my stash just gets out of control. Such is the current situation with my egg carton stash. It’s out of control, which means that there will most likely be many egg carton projects and activities in our near future, the first of which is a super simple egg carton letter sound sort.
This morning when we woke up to a miserable windy, dusty, trash-floating-through-the-air sort of day, Miss G and I opted to stay in and have a quiet day at home. We made a big pot of oatmeal, read stacks of books, played some games, built puzzles, and then played this super fun and simple play dough subtraction smash game I came up with a few days ago.