Beanbags, Balls and Boggle
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With multiple snow days, running my Rodan+Fields business and sending out query’s for my book, getting back into the swing of preschool has been a challenge. A little math lesson here a literacy project there, we haven’t been as consistent. To kickstart the week, I decided to create a few lessons that would engage, entertain and excite my little 4 year old.
Yesterday we took a trip to the dollar store for a pack of sports balls and balloons. Additionally, I dusted off my game of Boggle Jr. and tracked down my bean bag letters & numbers to add to our projects. Then, once the girls arrived home I adapted the activities to review their math and literacy skills.
Looking for some interactive literacy and math practice, here are the activities we generated.
Literacy and Math Review with Beanbags
Preschool
Play toss with the beanbag. My three year old and I sat on opposite sides of a yoga mat and tossed the beanbag back and forth. We reviewed phonemic awareness with letter names & sounds, and matched beginning and ending sounds.
Bean Bag Spell: Pratice making words and phonemes with simple three to four letter word combinations. I usually try and stay with one word family group a day such as -it or -an. Then we change out letters to make new words.
Pop the word: Just this morning we used up a cereal box of Pops. So, my four year old and I raced the timer (in the Boggle game) to name as many letters as we could. As soon as the timer rang, we popped the letters out of the box.
Number Pull. In a beach bucket I placed numbers 1-10. We drew a number and counted out chocolate chips to match. Then we practiced writing the number on our Boogie Board.
1st and 3rd Grade
Word Review and Spelling. My 3rd grader practiced spelling her words with the beanbags while my 1st grader helped build and read new words.
Math: Beanbag Multiplication skills were practiced for my 8 year old while the 6 year old focused on fact families (or adding and subtracting three sets of numbers ie: 2,4,6). For example: 2+4=6, 4+2=6, 6-2=4, 6-4=2
Learning with Sports Balls
The sports pack from the dollar store consisted of a football, soccer ball and basket ball. On the football I wrote common ending words such as: at, an, all, it. Upon the mini basket ball I wrote three sets of numbers, evenly spaced, on each section. Each hexagon on the mini soccer ball had a letter. Upon reflection, for less confusion, I should have written the vowels on the black pentagons or used a red pen to isolate.
Preschool
Letter Review (Soccer): Practicing and identifying letters and their sounds, we tossed the ball at each other reading a new letter each time. We then moved on to identifying words that started and ended with specified letters. We then kicked the ball around the room also naming letters we saw.
Making Words: Tossing the football, we practiced reading the words/common endings. Using the soccer ball, we then added a letter to the common endings to make words.
Grades 1 & 3
Number Review: We took turns tossing the basket ball identifying numbers. For my oldest, we tossed back and forth for multiplication review. The first player named a number then passed the ball. The next player then said a basic binary operation then read an additional number. He/she then tossed back the ball for the player to solve the problem. For my first grader, using mental math: I tossed the basket ball, read the three numbers across and then had her add them together.
Boggle Jr:
Beat the clock to find the correct letter, spell and read the word. I challenged my preschooler to quickly find the letters before the clock expires, exaggerating and being goofy as we solve the puzzle. He also enjoys playing by himself to review letters and make words.
