Learning Tools: Recycled Bottlecaps

Looking for ways to do more hands-on learning? Running short on supplies with remote and hybrid learning situations? 

Make your own learning manipulatives to use at home or at school! 

Recycled plastic bottle caps are easy to gather in a short time and come in a variety of colors and sizes. They are perfect for so many different uses - in literacy, math, and even art. 

As you work on letter recognition, you and your kiddos can put together a set of upper and lowercase letters for practice. Play a matching game with them, placing the uppers over the lowers and checking them together. You can also supply a name strip with the alphabet for self-checking :) 

Write sight words on larger caps and use them to manipulate into sentences - even “silly sentences” can be lots of fun and get your little friends interested in reading and writing :) Then, have them copy the sentences down for some writing practice - good fine-motor work!

At math time, use different colored bottle caps to make patterns - ABAB, AABAAB, ABCABC. Repurpose your collection to act as counters when making up or solving addition and subtraction number stories, or practicing basic math facts. See what other uses your budding mathematicians will come up with! Maybe sorting by attributes - size, color, ...?

Finding art applications is easy, too! Some friends may use them as “tiles” in a mosaic or to arrange into pictures. Others may use them as stamps or tracers with pencils to incorporate shapes into designs. They can also be glued into 3D forms as parts of sculptures, possibly using other recyclables. 

The opportunities are endless - see what your kiddos come up with! 

Have fun!

 

Remote Learning: Look for Sight Words All Around!

Part of learning to read is to quickly recognize some words - the words we call "sight words." Each grade level has an expected list, and each class does things a little differently, but there are lots of small, simple words your child will begin to recognize, especially with fun ways to practice them :)

One resource that is available to you at home is the use of what we call "environmental print." It's the print that you see on packaging, newspapers, magazines, signs, etc. Before you throw away your recyclables, I have a fun "game" for you to play at home :)

Show your child the box or paper, and see if they can find any words that stand out, either alone or as part of (a chunk of) another word .... let's call it a WORD HUNT! Once you've found something, cut it out! I found all these words on my Raisin Bran Crunch box this morning, before I recycled the rest  :)

For another step, you could tape or glue these words onto index cards, or cut up cardboard (use the flip side of the box!) and you have brand new sight word cards! If you find matching pairs, you could do WORD MATCH! I found all of these - I know there are some matching words in this pile!

SILLY SENTENCES is the next game ... arrange the words in sentence lines to try to make sentences. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they are just silly!! You might have to make some additional people, place or thing (noun) cards or action (verb) cards to form some complete sentences. Let your child draw pictures and help them sound out the corresponding words, so then they can use these when they have sentences to write for assignments.

Most of all, they will get used to looking for these words in the environment, tuning into literacy all around, and having fun with it!

Sight word fun!

Sight words are one of the first steps to early reading success - those common words we see when we read, that we need to know "in a snap" in order to read more fluently. Special practice for those sight words can be turned into FUN TIME for you and your child!

When your child starts learning these words in school, make practice FUN and varied, so they begin to enjoy reading right away!

Make a memory game: Grab some index cards, cut them in half, and have your child write each word twice. Use cool markers, lots of colors, whatever makes it more fun and interesting. Set up a game board by turning a few words at a time (2 cards for each) upside down in rows - make sure they're mixed up! Focusing on a few words at a time, looking for matches, will help your child get fluent in reading these words. When they're ready, add more to make it more challenging :) Sight word cards are also available as sets in many office or school supply stores.

Letter tiles: Use your old Scrabble letters or pick some up at an office supply or teacher supply store. The game BananaGrams also has the same sort of tiles. Play with them by making cards up (or using the ones from your Memory game), and challenging your child to find all the letters that make up that word, placing them in the correct order. After they get the visual matching, take away the cards … have one player read the word out loud and the other find the letters, without a visual guide. Great
practice!

Stamps and magnets: Use Playdoh to roll out letter shapes or look for letter stamps to press the words into the dough. Stamps and stamp pads would work the same way! Magnetic letters on the fridge or on a cookie tray are an easy, no-mess way to practice, as well.

Sensory options: Try some sensory play to get your child interested - tracing letters and words in shaving cream, pudding, salt, sand, etc. gives them a tactile experience that may help to solidify the learning. If messy is not your thing, put your choice in a Ziplock bag and trace through this squishy bag with a fun effect!

E-practice: There are also many apps available for iPads and iPhones to practice sight words. Just search for sight words and look at the variety that come up.

Try these posts for more ideas:

http://makeearlylearningfun.blogspot.com/2014/02/letters-make-words.html

http://makeearlylearningfun.blogspot.com/2015/09/rock-on.html

Most of all ... Have FUN!