Starfall

One of my all time favorites sites to use when teaching was Starfall.  It’s just packed with reading games and videos.  This week was Owen (and Ellie’s) first introduction to the wonderful site.  While he’s a master at the iPad, using a mouse is a different story.  I wanted to show him Starfall to start getting him familiar with how I move the mouse to click.  Although who knows. . .by the time he’s in school, everything could be touch screen. :)  You should check it out with your kiddos.

watching a video together

dancing to a gorilla song

he seriously couldn't get enough!

 

preschool fun

I’m pretty excited for this year as Owen is getting old enough to start doing some preschool-type activities with him.  Through Pinterest, I found this amazing website of ideas.  It’s called Engaging Toddler Activities.  Now I’ll warn you that it might make you feel like a bad mom.  At least it did to me.  This lady does stuff with her kid all.the.time.  Does she ever take a nap, or let her kid watch TV?  Not sure. . .but there are tons of great ideas and printables.  So focus on that.  So I whipped up this quick one during naptime.  And when he got up, we played with it.  For about 5 minutes.  And then he moved on.
I found a color wheel picture on Google.  Printed it off and laminated it with this stuff.That is one thing I really miss about teaching.  The laminator.  I may have to buy a small one if I ever decide to home school.  Anyways, then I took 6 clothespins and colored them the matching colors. The goal was for him to match the clothespins with the color.  It was pretty easy for Owen as he knows his colors well.  But he had a hard time pinching the clothespins so we’ll get it out again for that fine motor practice. Then, we went around and found cards that were the right colors.  He found this part a bit more up his alley. :)