Easter Literacy Activities

For March I made a bunch of St. Patrick's Day activities, which ended up being a fun diversion from our regular "curriculum." I decided to make some similar materials for Easter (and I'm hoping to make some general spring ones as well).

Easter Egg Scramble. I put magnetic letters for each of the sight words into the eggs for him to open up and unscramble. The reference sheet makes it a bit easier.

Ending blends. You could do these with movable letters or with dry erase markers. We're slowly working our way through  All About Spelling Level 1 have done blends recently. Even if we weren't, I figure extra fun practice is always good.

Beginning blends

Word family sorting activity. Each egg has a different word on it to match one of the baskets. You could laminate for durability, but we just did it without.

Easter syllable counting. We like to use these activities with bingo chips and a wand so that he can sweep them all up when he's done.

Print your Easter Literacy Activities HERE! 

 

The Benefits of Gaming

 In the past few years, there has been a range of different advice and guidance on how long your children should be able to spend on technology. And if it is good for them at all. 

But of course, there are benefits to everything, and studies found that there are some huge benefits to allowing your kids to play games. These could be games on the iPad, the pieces, or on a regular console.

It is important to keep in mind that this doesn't mean you need to buy your child the latest in technology, but it is the younger generation that will have access to a much cooler tech much faster, things like SoapBox Play. 

So it can be beneficial for them to be able to learn how to use this software and hardware before it arrives in classrooms and in higher education establishments.

Photo by AHMED HINDAWI on Unsplash

Problem-solving

Some of the highest-paid job roles often have problem-solving skills as one of their core skill requirements. This is because true problem solvers are rare to find. 

How about many games that have lots of different kinds of puzzles and problems that children need to learn to create cool solutions to.

Not talking about a simple problem-solving situation here; often, many games have to search for an item, learn how to, or work out how to use the item trade item, so try different approaches and plan. These are all the core skills that make up great problem-solving.

Leadership

Depending on the type of game your children play, they might learn some other key skills that are involved in leadership. Online gaming is only really suitable for a certain age group, but once they reach the threshold, they might find that playing online is something they love to do. 

They also might find that; actually, they find it very easy to wrangle a group of players and help them to defeat bosses and clear large amounts of content.

Leadership skills in games are very similar to leadership skills in real life; they involve handling disputes and arguments, motivating others to turn up, and organization skills, just to mention a few. 

Creativity 

Not all games require shooting each other, battling, or fighting at all. There are many games that simply require your child to enjoy and let loose their creativity. They can build world's break world's correct castles and pretty much do whatever their imagination will let them. 

It is more common now to have games that also involve coding, and as your child learns to code, there will be extra cool things added to the game. 

It's not just at home you will be experiencing gaming; there are many different educational apps that use gamification to help the learning process be more fun. 

And even with all of that, gaming together can be some of the most fun times that you spend, And you can find lots of innovative ways to make the gaming experience even better with this post: Top Tips for Creating a Positive and Enriching Gaming Experience for Kids. 

This is a contributed post

Easter Resources

 

Printables:

Easter Tot School Printables

Easter Cuisenaire Templates

Easter Literacy Activities (~Kindergarten/1st grade)

Easter Math Activities (~Kindergarten/1st Grade)

Easter Egg Pattern Matching Activity

Blog Posts:

Preschool Easter (~3 years 2021)

Easter Tot School Activities (~2 years 2020)

Baby Easter Activities (11 months 2019)

Easter Week Post (3.5 years 2014)

Color Matching Eggs

Easter Egg Chemistry

Lego Easter Egg Hunt (2015)

Tools and Manipulative Ideas:

Dot Markers Easter Activity Book

Eggmazing Egg Decorator

Mini Easter Erasers

Play-Doh Easter Basket Toys

Rabbit Paper Punch

Tulip Paper Punch

Book Ideas:

Toddler Books:

Little Blue Truck's Springtime

There's a Little Chick in Your Book

Easter Engines

Where Are Baby's Easter Eggs

Biscuit's Pet & Play Easter

Baby Loves Spring

Llama Llama Easter Egg

Splat the Cat: Where's the Easter Bunny?

Hippity, Hoppity, Little Bunny

Egg

Happy Easter from the Crayons

Happy Easter, Mouse!

Escargot and the Search for Spring

Bear Finds Eggs

It's Easter, Little Critter

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick

How to Track an Easter Bunny

The Great Eggscape

The Easter Ribbit

The Littlest Easter Bunny

How to Catch an Easter Bunny

Happy Easter, Little Critter

3 Tips to Help Your Child Improve in School

 Parents play one of the biggest roles in a child’s education. While it’s true that teachers do as well, a child will come across many teachers in their academic career but it’s going to be the parent who can push their child.  Children are at home more than they’re at school, plus there are some major gaps in between school such as summer break. Education isn’t something that a child solely gets from school. Education is something that they need to get outside of school as well, and this includes home.

A parent needs to be readily available to help their little one out. When it comes to school, there are a lot of components other than just learning. A child needs to have good grades in order to pass and get into a good college. This also includes socializing, not being afraid to raise their hand in class but also demonstrating that they know what they’re doing. So how can you help them improve their academic performance at school? These are some ways how!

Image credit 

Talk to your child about motivation

If you’re wanting to give your little one that extra push, then it’s best to see what’s up. Maybe there is something blocking them from feeling completely motivated. This will help you determine what’s going on and what factors are playing a role in your child’s education. This can include whether or not they like the school they attend, and how you can navigate this such as looking into Alpine Academy Utah reviews to see if that may be a good fit. 

If it’s just their teacher, their classmates, or anything else that’s getting in the way. They need to be motivated so there can be a chance that the environment is affecting them.

Create a reward system

Getting your child to feel motivated through rewards can be one of the greatest things you can do.  It helps your kids grow up, it helps them understand what’s right and what’s wrong. Plus, it’s been proven time and time again that punishment isn’t always the best way to teach. Children remember the benefits when they do something good, and they’ll just continue doing that.

 So why not create a reward system? If they get good grades, you can reward them with something. During parent-teacher conferences, you can reward your child if the teacher has good things to say.

Get a tutor

Sometimes a parent can help their little one out with assignments, but sometimes it’s not possible. So what can a parent do? Get a tutor! Hiring a tutor to help your child can be one of the best ways to get your child motivated and to improve their grades. This can give that extra push that’s been needed. While many parents are dismayed by tutors due to pricing, it doesn’t need to be that way at all. 

Tutors can be cheap, whether you opt into a tutoring program, an after-school tutoring program provided by their school, or even just look into volunteer tutors (often at local colleges), a tutor can help and they don’t cost much usually. 

This is a contributed post.

Pre-K St Patrick's Day Activities

While we are slowly working our way through some purchased curriculum this year, I decided to also add in some themed activities that either go with the seasons/holidays or go with Archer's interests. Here are some of our St Patrick's Day Themed Activities. Archer is 3.5 but I try to meet him at his skill and interest level.

Eraser addition boxes. This was the first time doing this type of activity and he really enjoyed it. He actually saw the tray and insisted on doing it before I had planned.

We played this spinner addition game together. He had one color coin and I had the other. We took turns spinning and covering up the corresponding number. My plan was to have whoever got rid of their coins first win, but he just wanted to cover them all up.

We printed this Irish flag to color from Little Passports.

St Patrick's Day playdough had some green playdough, green gems, coins, shamrock buttons, a shamrock cookie cutter and some gold nuggets.

Leprechaun's Gold coin counting. I put various amounts of coins in these little cauldrons and had him practice adding them up. He did great as long as I reminded him to start adding with the biggest coins first.

Shamrock hole punch activity from Early Learning Ideas

Shamrock pin punching.

St Patrick's Day word family matching

Digging star pony beads out of  therapy putty. He ended up really enjoying it, so we will definitely be doing it again. I also had a little response worksheet for him after he got them all out.

Lucky Charms sorting/graphing activity. He rarely gets sugary cereal so he LOVED this activity.

St. Patrick's Cuisenaire templates

I had out my folder that had last year's activities and Archer found these 10s frame sheets and wanted to do them.

Syllable counting has been something he's been hesitant to try. He usually does ok, but his lack of confidence makes him resistant. Luckily, he was interested enough to put the little green gems on his syllable worksheet.

Blend Word Cards Initially he wanted to do these cards with his  All About Spelling Tiles. Eventually, he asked if he could write out the whole words on lined paper. I was definitely not going to argue that!

St Patrick's Day Books. He didn't want me to read any of them to him, so he read them on his own.

It's St Patrick's Day
How to Catch a Leprechaun

Clever Tom and the Leprechaun

There Way an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover

Pete the Cat and the Great Leprechaun Chase

The Night Before St Patrick's Day