Shop O Roma

We just love the Llama Llama books by Anna Dewdney. After reading the Llama llama mad at mama we did our own shop O Roma like in the book. Using cardboard boxes, tape and some stickers we made a scanner, shelfs and a fridge. We had a great time shopping using our play kitchen toys, food and our new shop o roma items.

 

 

Fridge section where we put our cold items. The kids had a lot of fun opening and closing the doors as they put the food in and out.

 

Here is one of the felt foods that we had. It is really easy to make, red felt with pick stripes glued or stiched to it. Place in a plastic bag and you had shop o roma bacon.

I got this idea from the Play and learn we went to when we lived in San Antonio. It was great!

Busy Bag intro

Being a former elementary teacher has forever changed the way I view children's activities. I am a big fan of limited TV and a tons of hands-on learning activities to fill a child's (especially toddler & preschoolers) days. So once I saw Busy Bags I became completely obsessed. I had already been doing these types of activities with my own kids but making them into easy take anywhere bags was an awesome idea. Children need and love to learn, we just need to provide the opportunity for them to grow! The picture and lots of fun ideas can be found here

Socks

Ok this is a simple, productive and Fun way to work on matching with your young child. While doing laundry save all your socks until you have a big pile. Than help you child lay out socks and find matches. You can make it a race or a contest to see who can finish first. Another thing we like to do is after all the socks are matched and folded into balls we play dodgesock ( you know like dodge all). Another game is setting up everyone's laundry baskets and shooting them into the baskets like basket balls. You can have fun, get chores done and work on matching, color and aiming skills. Not to mention a lot of smiles and fun!

Fast food Busy Bag

I love finding easy all put together activities for my kids. And this we just happened to find as we were traveling and stopped for lunch. As we got the kids their kids meals i didn't expect to much more than the normal chicken, apples, milk and some cheap toy that would entertain the kids for a few minutes. I was pleasantly surprised to find Mattel travel versions of some of there games. I was so excited I asked for more. I was able to get Pictonary Man, Wac A Mole & Flippin' Frogs. In the Wendy's kids meals. My kids really enjoyed them and were able to work their brains at the same time.

Tot Packs

These are a great way to get your toddler interested in learning. You can choose different packets from your child's favorite story like Brown Bear or even a favorite movie like CARS or Dinosaur Train. Each packet has activities about color, shapes, letters, numbers, tracing and more. These are absolutely wonderful. I have even used piece of the on long car rides. Or you can make them into different file folder games. (See picture below)

Click here to see all the Tot Books.

Alphabet tracing Worksheet

These are the alphabet tracing worksheets that I used when doing Preschool with my little one. These pages are cute and have both upper and lower case letters on one page. That way you can decide when to teach each part but have the convenience of not having to worry about two separate pages. I really like the simple way that the worksheet is set up and it is in a familiar pattern for my little one to follow.
Click here for the link to download and print your own. This is a great resource for tracing letters either while learning each letter or just reviewing. I also plan on laminating mine and using the whiteboard crayons and markers. So I can use them over and over again with out using more ink.

Tracing Numbers

As part of our daily preschool time with my 3 year old we do a Number Tracing worksheet. This is great because it has an area for the child to practice tracing and then to try on their own as well. At the bottom there is an area where they get to circle the pictures that are in sets of whatever the number is . For example if the number is 2 then they circle all the pictures that have two of them.
The link below has the printables I used. They were great and simple and of course free.
Click here and then scroll down until you see the number tracing.