a short vowel word game

Who lives in the house of "at?"



Why, bat, hat, mat, rat, and cat, of course!

When doing this lesson,
the child puts all the "at" cards on the house first.
Then she puts the beginning sounds in place,
sounding out each letter combination as she goes.
If she's a writer, she can make a book with the words she's built.

The children can choose from several sets of cards...

"an" {c, p, f, r, m}
"ap" {c, m, n, s, t}
"et" {j, n, p, s, w}
"en" {d, h, m, p, t}
"it" {s, f, m, h, p}
"in" {b, f, p, t, w}
"og" {b, d, h, j, l}
"op" {b, h, m, p, t}
"ug" {b, h, j, m, r}
"ut" {c, g, h, n, r}

I bet you can think of even more short vowel combos, too!

The house part of the lesson is made from felt,
and the cards are hand-written on squares of paper, then laminated.

Someday, when I have a little more time and motivation,
{oh, if only!}
I'd love to post some tutorials on the felts we use for language lessons.
Not only are they useful, they make the lessons so appealing
to little hands!

busy hands

painting at the easel

tracing a name tag
{The children usually use their name tags to "save"
lessons for more than one work period,
but they're nice to trace, too!}

baby washing
{This lesson has been irresistible to the 3 & 4 year old girls!}

twisting nuts onto bolts

building sentences
{Read more about this lesson here.}

making a number stamp book

shoveling snow
{at my house}

Wooo hoooooo!!!
{I heart snow!}

sink or float

A classic experiment...

Will it sink,
or will it float?

Some of the objects we've been testing:

ping pong balls
sea glass
beads
lava rocks
playground rocks
corks
plastic ice cubes
marbles

When the child discovers whether an object sinks or floats,
he puts it in the "sink" section or the "float" section of a laminated chart.

As you may know, I'm a right-brained kind of gal, and honestly,
I don't blame you if the thought of a laminated chart sounds lame,
BUT it's not lame!

It provides the child with experience in
sorting AND graphing,

AND it leads to comments like,
"Hey! More things sink than float!"

AND everyone, even the non-readers,
are exposed to the words "sink" and "float."

How swell is that?!

Is your refrigerator running?

No?
Oh, well,
hmmm...

I woke up
on my 6th day of being sick
{I am totally over being sick!}
to discover that our dear old Kelvinator
had kicked the bucket during the night.
Water was everywhere.
It was gross.

R.I.P.
old frigidy friend

Montessori to come!
{promise}

Halloween recap

Hubs and I always make pumpkin people for our porch.
{The witch was my favorite this year!}

Ooooooo.... spooky!
Here's the porch at night.
{red lights - some with white paper globes, spider webs, and bats}

It was even spookier in the entryway!
{black light, tissue paper ghosts, orange flagging, and frightening portraits}

We nibbled on monster fingers and toes.
{Get the recipe here.}

Here I am dressed as Carmen Miranda, having a ball!
{One of my top 10 favorite costumes}

Overall, the evening was spook-tacular!
{I can't wait until next year!}