I'll be posting some of my road trip with lots of little kids tips AFTER the road trip, because Lord knows if I start talking about it now, the trip will be doomed! I do have lots of little tricks up my sleeve, so hopefully it will be a fun and easy trip.
To get ready for the beach, we have been doing some beach and ocean-themed things at home with the kids. We set some summer goals at the beginning of the summer, to keep us on track (if you want to really get behind summer goals, check out someone who REALLY does a great job ~ Shawni at 71 Toes!) Sophia really needed to work on her spelling before 2nd grade, and Amelia is so very close to reading on her own. We've mostly been reading lots, Sophia has been writing in her journal, and there have been many days of happy freeform artsing and crafting. But this week, we themed things up!
First, I found two great sources for beautiful printable worksheets ~ some of these were PERFECT for Sophia and Amelia's levels. Here and here. That allkidsnetwork site has been a great source for some phonics sheets for Amelia too (I may have posted about that already?)
Then, we dug out our Usborne Encyclopedia of Seas & Oceans. I LOVE Usborne books ~ I find myself just sitting and looking at the pictures myself. This has been a great resource, because I think the kids will get more out of our trip if they know what creatures they are looking at, how the tides, work, etc. We'll be taking it on our trip, too.
I found this fun, fun Ocean Animal Movements game on another blog, and it is perfect, because there are parts of it for Sophia, Amelia, AND Henry! Go here and read about it and get the printables. For three kids, we had them all go through all of the cards, mimicking the movements. Then for Amelia, we would say "find the animal that starts with __" or "find the animal that ends with __" to work on her letters. For Sophia we did the verb part of the game and had her "find the animal that __" and inserted the action word. Then for Henry, we worked on colors. I printed these on white paper, but I colored in each animal a different color, so we did "find the ___ animal" and said the color. Fun!
Another game that I got for free online was this sight words game from a teacher's blog. Race to the beach! The girls are playing that today, so I can't wait to hear how it goes. Easy to print off and all we needed was a couple of playing pieces and a dice.
Aside: One thing I struggle with as a working mom, is wanting to do these things with my kids, but not being able to. I feel like sometimes I rush home from work to get dinner on the table, and then I spend the rest of the evening with the kids practicing piano, nagging them about chores, and getting everyone to bed. They are tired by the end of the day, so it's not a good time for us to work on school work. I have said it before, but I am SO, so lucky to be married to a fabulous dad, and he is good about working with the kids on schoolwork. He just needs a little help figuring out what to do. So I have been preparing things for him ~ for example, for this week, I made envelopes for each day of the week, and on each envelope I wrote the day of the week, and then "to help prepare for our beach trip..." and then gave the girls some extra chores (like helping with laundry, etc.), and then I wrote out which of these school activities they are doing for the day and stuck them in the envelope.
Anyway, finally, I found an online printable first reader about the beach for Amelia ~ but sadly I can't find it again. I should have bookmarked it! It was just a little black and white booklet that I printed off and stapled together. And then for Sophia, I created two writing prompts instead of her normal journal writing - one is to write some sentences about her favorite sea animal, and the other is to pretend she is a dolphin and write about that (and draw a picture).
These are all easy, cheap, and fun things for the kids, and have helped to build the anticipation for our trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment