How to Be Awesome at Quarantine with Kids Part 2

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You just found out your children's school is closing for three to four weeks.  You can't take them anywhere.  You can't travel.  You just see days and days full of hours and hours yawning ahead of you.

Picture credits to Douglas Adams and this site.

Remember from my last post, if reading ideas about activities and plans stresses you out, walk away now.  Everyone copes differently.  Some people need this info, and some need to hear me say it's ok to do nothing.  Do what you need to do to get through.  And not all of these ideas will work for all age groups and all family situations.  You are welcome to message me with specific questions, and I will do my best.  I'm just trying to help in the very small ways I can, so if this helps, great.  If it doesn't help, no worries.

But let's say you need some suggestions.  I have some areas that I consider basic ingredients for my day.

Let's go through each area and talk about some basics.

• Academics

Many schools are transitioning to e-learning or online class components.  If that is the case for your school, make this a priority.  That means it gets done early, and intentionally.  If you like a schedule, set a time to all sit down and make it happen.  If you like it looser, set boundaries around what has to be completed each day before screen time or free play.  

If your school is not giving your children academic work to do from home, like most of the schools in my state are not, you can still devote some time each day to working on academics that will help them retain what they are learning.  You might use math flashcards, spelling games, books from the library about what they are studying in history or science, or whatever else you think would help engage their minds.  We are going to talk in a later post about theme days, and it is easy to find some quick activities for math, science, etc, that go along with pretty much any theme you can imagine.

• Reading

Setting aside reading time each day might be the very best thing you could do over the next few weeks.  You can order books from most local libraries online, and pick them up quickly without having to stay long in a public place.  If your library is closed, you could also order them new or used on Amazon if that isn't an option.  Chances are, you probably have a ton of books at your house already that you can pull out.  For little ones, read to them or with them every day. For older kids, set aside DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time each day.  Model it yourself!  Let them see you sitting on the couch reading during DEAR time.  

This is a great time to pick a chapter book to read aloud to your family.  The Read Aloud Revival has great suggestions for family read aloud books.  And if you don't like to read out loud, you can find audio books at your library or on YouTube, Spotify, Podcast Apps, Libby, Hoopla, Audible, etc.  Not all of those will be available to everyone, and some of them are free while others have a cost, but there are plenty of resources available.  Audiobooks have a magical way of entrancing kids from 4 to 14 (and adults too) and they will give you topics of conversation, inside jokes, and ideas for academic enrichment.  If you need some quick recommendations, I am reading Anne of Green Gables right now to my kids, ages 4 and 7.

And my husband is reading them The Green Ember.

We also recently finished Thorton Burgess' Big Book of Animal Stories and loved it!

• Gross Motor

Think big movements and big muscles.  Running, jumping, tumbling, jumping jacks, etc., are all gross motor activities.  There are lots of great exercise and activity videos on YouTube for kids.  Two of my favorites are Jack Hartman and Cosmic Kids Yoga.  You can also print out activity cards like these and set up an exercise circuit or an obstacle course for them to do.  If they can do gross motor activities outside, even better!  Jump rope, cartwheels, freeze tag, etc. Kids crave the deep muscle input they receive from gross motor activities, and they need to stretch and get out that energy, for everyone's sanity!  

• Fine Motor

Fine motor activities are the ones that require precision and detail, such as lacing, tying, sewing, pinching, etc.  For younger children, this can look like sorting pom poms into ice cube trays, or making a Froot Loops necklace.  For older children, it can be cross stitch or macrame or making paracord bracelets.  Stacking and balancing blocks, playing Jenga, coloring, and playing with Legos can also be fine motor activities.  I try to incorporate at least one fine motor activity into each day.

• Art

Creative expression is important, especially in times of stress!  Pull out some old magazines to make a collage.  Let everyone paint abstracts.  Make a nature mandala in the backyard.  There are tons of easy art projects that don't require special supplies and don't create too much of a mess.  You can search Pinterest for easy art ideas, or do something that goes with your daily theme.  One art project a day can give kids an outlet for expression and encourage them get lost in an idea.  While they're at it, why not pick up a paintbrush yourself?  You might be surprised how good it feels!

• Music

Music is soothing and has been shown to lower stress hormones and unify groups of people.  Whether it's a living room dance party or practicing an instrument, try to bring some music into your day!  YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, or even just the radio can provide some background while they paint or some rhythm while they perfect their dance moves. 

• Free Time

Remember when we were kids and we were allowed to get bored?  It's still an ok thing.  Boredom is actually important to kids because it encourages innovation and creativity.  If they aren't used to unstructured free time, or if they haven't had any since last summer, it might take a while to get used to, but that's ok too.  Start with a set time, and tell them it is their time to free play.  No tech or screens, and no structured activities.  There might be wailing and gnashing of teeth in the beginning, but eventually they will wander off and find something.  (Offering extra chores or tasks as an alternative always worked for my mom. Just saying.)

• Housework

We already talked about how things are going to get messier than normal.  Incorporate your kids into helping keep the house clean.  If they are little, it might be as simple as "helping" you sweep with a small broom or wiping doorknobs and baseboards with a wet wipe.  (Mine started doing that at 3 years old.)  If they are older, they can help fold clothes and towels, clean their rooms, set the table, etc.  It contributes to the sense of adventure and the attitude of "we are in this together" if they are included in the daily tasks more.  Again, there might definitely will be complaining, but it is worth it to use this time to teach about serving our family and taking care of our things.

Housework can also include cooking!  Get them involved in making snack bags, lunches, bread, dinner, desserts, etc.  It might make a bit more mess, but hey, you've got extra time now!

Of course there are plenty of other things you could add in, and we will talk about some of those next time, but if you hit all eight of those every day, plus meals, you are well on your way to filling the hours.

Next, I will give you some easy, no-prep activities in each of these categories that you can pull out on the fly.  Then I will talk about some theme day ideas if you want more detailed plans.  As always, comment or message me if you have questions.  I'm happy to help!

Here's a black and white version of the graphic so you can print it out and check it off if you want.  Both graphics were made for me by Megan Floyd at meganfloyd.com .  She is amazing.

How to Be Awesome at Quarantine with Kids Part 1

Schools are closing.  Everything is crazy.  Families who never wanted to homeschool are now honorary homeschoolers for the next several weeks.

It can feel like a long road ahead.

Welcome to the family!

If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of doing anything but screen time and Lunchables for the next couple of weeks, no judgement here.  We all deal with stress and crises differently.  Some people panic at the thought of implementing any kind of structure or they simply feel it isn't necessary.  That's a valid response, and you probably don't want to continue reading. 

But some people need some kind of structure in order to thrive.  (It's me.  I'm some people.)  It doesn't have to be a rigid schedule, nor does it have to be the same as anyone else's, but for me, chaos makes me panic.  I need a plan.  And I've seen lots of posts asking for help and ideas, so I thought I could share what works for me.  This isn't my attempt to force anything on anyone else or make quarantine "Pinterest-worthy."  I'm just offering what I have to anyone who might be interested.  Take it as it is.

So you want to set up some kind of routine or schedule or at least plan some activities to pull out when the kids get restless?  Let's start with a couple of mindset adjustments that will help for the long haul.

• Expect more mess.  It's gonna happen.  Whatever your tolerance level for mess is, having kids home all day, every day is gonna push those limits.  Take a minute before you do any planning to try to address this so it doesn't drive you crazy and inhibit the rest of your plans.  What are the definite boundaries (like, no art on the couches, or no food on the carpet, etc.)?  What are the areas where you can give a little (like letting some sensory filler spill on the kitchen floor), and how can you incorporate cleaning breaks into your day so that you don't feel overwhelmed by 6:00?
• Try to stretch the times.  For little ones, try to stretch activities to 20 or 30 minutes.  For older ones, try for 45 minutes to an hour.  That means you probably won't be able to just set play dough on the table and expect them to occupy themselves for an hour.  You'll have to be more involved.  Help them make up games, like a play dough pie store, or print off some play dough mats.  If you are constantly jumping from activity to activity every five minutes, they will be restless and you will go crazy.  Pinterest is your friend here.  Search "easy play dough activities" to get some good ideas.  
• Use themes.  Everyone who knows me knows I love a good theme.  Don't try to invent twenty random activities each day.  Pick a theme for the day and make the activities fit with the theme.  It encourages them to combine and expand, and it makes your life easier because you will naturally start to come up with more ideas that go with the theme.  
• Get outside.  If at all possible, go outside every day.  If it's raining but not storming, let them splash in puddles and then come in and take warm baths (fills extra time!).  If it's cold, bundle them up and give them five or ten minutes to do a nature scavenger hunt.  Or even just have them run out the door and do ten jumping jacks and then run back in.  Fresh air is great for everyone!
• Don't expect to get a lot "done."  You will not be as productive as usual.  It's important to make peace with that.  Constant interruptions, heightened vigilance, more mess, and constantly finding things for them to do means that you are going to look back at the end of some days and say, "Did I actually DO anything today!?"  The answer is yes.  You were there for your kids, and that is a full-time job.  Give yourself some grace.
• Adopt an attitude of adventure.  I know these are anxious times, and I know there are a lot of inconveniences and disappointments swirling around everyone, but as much as possible, approach these next few weeks with a purposeful attitude of adventure.  We've never done this before.  We are all in this together, including your kids.  Keep a "quarantine journal" or blog or vlog.  Get your kids to add to it.  

We are going to get through this together, you guys.  We have so many resources at our disposal.  Eyes up, hearts up!  You've got this.

In my next post, I'm going to go over some basic ingredients for a day, and then I'll give some easy no-prep activities for those who want to keep it super simple, and some theme day ideas for those like me who need a plan!

Let me know if you have specific questions.  I'm always happy to help!

Awesome and Easy Collages for Toddlers

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.  I am not otherwise compensated for my opinions.

I found a couple of pins recently that inspired me to do some new simple projects with Cricket's easel.  This is the style of easel we use.  It's just a basic white board on one side and chalkboard on the other.

She loves to paint and draw on it, but these were a few other quick and low budget projects that I used to fill some time when I was tired or she was restless.  

Feelings Collage

First we went through a couple of my old magazines and looked for pictures of people who were showing different emotions, and I cut them out.  Cricket helped me find pictures, and we talked about what they might be feeling and why.  

It was easy to find happy people, and even excited and proud people, but it took a while to find pictures of people who looked sad and angry.  Prescription ads ended up being very helpful.  :o)

I just used plain easel paper from this pad I ordered for Cricket's second birthday.  It's lasted forever!

I taped a piece of easel paper up and wrote "I Feel" in the middle of it.  Then I wrote emotion words like "sad" and "happy" around the paper.  She painted some glue around it and stuck the corresponding pictures next to the word as we talked about it.  

Of course, she loves painting, so painting glue was great fun for her.  She also liked the pictures, and she enjoyed talking about them.

The emotions we ended up with were happy, sad, angry, proud, surprised, and grumpy.  These are all emotions we have talked about with her for a while now, and they have come up in several of her books.

Not only does this help teach her how to express her own emotions, it also helps her practice recognizing social cues in other people to determine their emotions.  This is a valuable skill for toddlers (and for adults), and one that doesn't always come naturally, so it's good to practice.  

After we finished putting the pictures on, she decorated it with stickers just for fun.  She used a couple of stickers as band-aids for the sad person, which showed me that she was really listening to what we were talking about and empathizing with the person in the picture.  

When she finished her collage, we taped it to her bedroom door.  She is very proud of it, and she loves to show it off to people, which gives her even more opportunities to practice recognizing and repeating the emotion vocabulary she is learning.  I was really happy with this activity and highly recommend it.

Sticker Collage

For something even easier, I just put up a piece of paper and let her stick stickers wherever she wanted.  She loved it!  

Just about every toddler loves stickers, so this is a fun and really easy activity for them.  I had a bunch leftover from my classroom that I pulled out, but if you need some, Dollar Tree always has a bunch, as well as the dollar bins at Target or Wal-Mart.  Melissa and Doug also has some great sticker pads that come with hundreds of great looking stickers for a decent price.  A friend got Cricket one last Christmas, and she's still using it!

The only thing about stickers is, some of them are hard to get off the paper they come on, so I stuck a bunch to a chair so I could do dishes while she worked on her collage.

When she was finished, I gave her the option to further decorate her collage with crayons or colored pencils.  She wasn't interested at the time, but I left it up for a few days, and she did come back and color it a little.

She has asked to do this again and again, so I'd call this one a success as well.  

Torn Paper Collage

This is another super easy one.  I taped a piece of contact paper to the easel, sticky side out.  

I let Cricket and her friend tear pieces of construction paper and just stick them on!

They chose to tear the paper into big pieces.  I love that since the contact paper is clear, you can see the drawings she had done on the easel, giving it a kind of background.

To add a natural sensory aspect to this one, try the Contact Paper Window I wrote about when Cricket was younger.  

Remember, it doesn't have to be complicated to be a fun and absorbing experience for a toddler!

Awesomely Easy Toddler School: Letter A

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.  My opinions are all my own.

Last time, I introduced Toddler School as a way to incorporate learning into your toddler's every day routine.  Today, I'm going to go over specifically what we did with the letter A, so if you wanted to, you could use this as a kind of template to make it easy on yourself.  No need to reinvent the wheel!

Just as an aside, please remember that this is not forced or meant to be a super structured sit-in-a-desk time.  This is a fun, do whatever she's interested time.  Not every child responds to this kind of thing.  If yours doesn't, you'll have to get sneakier or more creative about how you introduce information to them.  You can still do it, but maybe not in this way.

Ok, but if you do want to do what we are doing, this is how we do it.

Calendar Time and Number Play

First of all, we start out day by doing our calendar.  I talked about it in my last post.  The calendar is a great way to practice counting, number recognition, prereading skills, days of the week, months, and more!  I also use calculator play, number puzzles, and the Poke a Dot books for number and counting practice throughout the day.  These are not really related to my alphabet theme, but I do try to make a point to do at least one number activity or book with her each day.

She loves playing with "her" calculator.

Alphabet Unit

As I said in my last post, I decided to do units based on a letter of the alphabet.  Each unit lasts approximately two weeks.  During that time, I try to cover two famous people (one man and one woman), at least one animal (usually a bunch), one place, and one object, all beginning with the target letter.  I also choose a character trait that is usually based on at least one of the people we are studying.  (It may or may not begin with the target letter.)  Here are the ones I chose for the letter A.

Man:  Albert Einstein

I have some leeway in whether I want the first or last name to start with the target letter, and it varies depending on which person I choose and honestly, which books my local libraries have.  We found a couple of simple ones on Einstein, and we emphasized that he worked hard and studied so that he could discover new things.

Also, I recently got her this book, Quantum Physics for Babies:

It is awesome, and the last page says, "Now you are a quantum physicist," with a picture of Einstein, so it got read a lot.

Woman: Amelia Earhart

This was Cricket's favorite part of the whole letter A unit.  She absolutely loves Amelia Earhart!  We got several books from the library about her, but Cricket's favorite by far was this one, called I am Amelia Earhart.

It really is a cute book, and apparently the illustrator used to work for Marvel Comics and some other big names.  Cricket would often repeat the lines Amelia said, like, "This is awesome!" and "This isn't a good idea.  It's the BEST idea!"  We emphasized that Amelia Earhart was very brave to do all the things she did, and the book makes a point of saying that she wasn't a natural pilot.  She just worked harder than anyone else.  I loved that part.

Brian found an old pair of tinted goggles that
immediately became her "Amelia Earhart goggles."

I used this coloring page for Amelia Earhart, but you can find plenty just by Googling it.

Animals: Alligator, Ant

We got a book about alligators and crocodiles and had fun reading it and looking at the pictures.  I used this coloring page for the alligator.  It is actually a whole set of letters made in the form of animals that begin with that letter, so I am making a little book out of them as she colors each one.

Places:  Atlantic Ocean, Antarctica, Australia, Alabama, America

Letter A is the jackpot when it comes to places.  Print off a map and you'll realize that the majority of the continents begin with the letter A, as well as several oceans, states, and countries.  (Not all of them begin with the traditional "A for Apple" sound though, so I used those for letter recognition, but not for the phonics emphasis.)  The main place we focused on was the Atlantic Ocean because it went along with the life of Amelia Earhart.  We also found some library books about Antarctica and Australia, so we ended up talking about those some, too.  They were a cute little series that was just perfect for a toddler attention span, with cool pictures and facts.

     

I printed off a world map to cover the oceans and continents, and I printed off a map of America and a map of Alabama, because we live there.  We also checked out a colorful children's atlas to look through, and a couple of books on Alabama.  Cricket especially liked Y is for Yellowhammer.  It goes through the alphabet and tells an interesting fact about Alabama for each letter.  They make them for several different states.

Object: Apple

The activities from 1+1+1=1 (more about them below) were all apple themed, so that was our main object, but of course, we talked about lots of words that started with A when we found them in our books or just out and about.  I think we even managed to eat applesauce and/or an actual apple sometime during the two weeks.  I am not stressing about trying to coordinate snacks to fit my theme (like some blogs I've read).  This one just happened to fit.

I also used this airplane coloring page because we were already talking about Amelia Earhart, so she had seen the word airplane a lot. The word airplane doesn't start with the traditional "A in Apple" sound, so we didn't focus on it for the phonics part, but we did use it for the letter recognition.  Airplanes are also great to talk about because toddlers are just starting to be aware of airplanes in the sky, so it comes up regularly.

By the end of our two weeks, our kitchen cabinet display was pretty full.

Character Trait:  Bravery

I know it doesn't start with an A, but since bravery came up naturally in the Amelia Earhart books, I made a point to emphasize it during these two weeks and beyond.  When she did something on her own the first time, we told her she was brave like Amelia Earhart.  We talked about how being brave meant doing something even when you were a little scared, like going into her bedroom when it was dark and turning on the light herself.  This has been something we have continued to talk about with other historical figures and Bible figures, emphasizing that there are many different ways to show bravery.

Bible Activities:

As I mentioned before, I printed off these amazing verse cards and put them on a ring.  The verse for A is "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.  Joshua 24:15."  Cricket had no trouble memorizing this.  I would just read it to her and show her the card each morning, and for almost a week, she just listened.  Then one day, in the middle of lunch, she just started saying it.

I have to say, I was a little skeptical of trying to get her to do memory verses.  I didn't know if they were too long or too complicated, but she picks them up so fast!  We still review all of them every day, but she absolutely can say them by memory by the end of the two week unit, just saying them once a day like that.  Kids' brains are amazing.

We also read a Bible story every day from our Big Picture Interactive Storybook.

I did a blog post a little while ago on how and why we chose that storybook Bible.  We are loving it so far.  The stories are a little longer than Cricket's normal books, and since there is one story per page, sometimes she gets anxious for me to turn the page, but she usually makes it through the story ok, and she is definitely picking things up.  The other day she started repeating, "God always keeps His promises," which was the theme of the story on Abraham we had read that day.

I also try to make sure we listed to some praise and worship music or some verses set to music at some point during the day.  Pandora has a great praise and worship station, and Seeds Family Worship has some AMAZING Scripture set to music that she and I both love.

Other activities we did during the two weeks:

Play Dough

I have a set of alphabet cookie cutters that my sister-in-law gave me, and boy have they come in handy over and over!  Here's a set you can get on Amazon:

When we were talking about the letter A, I gave her the A cookie cutter and she had a blast making her own letters.

Google eyes and pipe cleaners are also super fun.

Alphabits

Alphabits are the new Cheerio's at our house.  I got them for her birthday party, but she loved them so much, I've kept getting them!  (And they're surprisingly not full of sugar!  They have a pretty short list of ingredients, too.)  She loves pointing out the letters as she's eating them, and even spontaneously decided one morning to look through her bowl of dry Alphabits to find the letters that spelled April.

It didn't even occur to me to do that, but we've done it several times with different words since then.  Whenever she finds a target letter in her Alphabits, we make a point to say the sound it makes.

Alphabet toys and puzzles

I absolutely love my Melissa and Doug Alphabet puzzle.  It is how she learned her letters in the first place, back when she was potty training.  She would spend forever working on that puzzle, and by the end of the week, she could recognize every letter and say the word for the pictures underneath them.  She still plays with it a lot.

Other alphabet toys that I love are the foam bathtub letters,

the magnet alphabet on our fridge,

and this Light Up Alphabet Apple that I got at a consignment sale.

They are all great review and practice for letter recognition and phonics sounds, and there are lots of things you can do with them.

Printables

As I mentioned before, I use several printables from 1+1+1=1.  It is a great site with just TONS of stuff you can use for your young child.  I just use a few basic ones, like the traceable target letter and the letter with a couple of pictures around it, both of which I put in page protectors so she can use dry erase crayons to color every day.

    
If you haven't discovered this combination yet, you're welcome.

Toddlers are not able to write letters accurately yet, so don't push that.  Just let them color the picture and watch you make the letters.

I also print out a couple of her pages on cardstock that Cricket can play with over and over.  There is always a little puzzle picture for the target letter, a matching shadow game, a sequencing game, and a lacing picture.  Cricket loves these and often asks to play with them several times a day.

So there you go.  That's everything I used for the two weeks we focused on the letter A.  Please remember, I didn't do all of this every day.  Some of it, like the play dough, I may have done once a week.  It just depends.  Also, remember this is just an introduction.  This isn't kindergarten.  My goal was for her to be able to recognize the letter, give the sound it makes, (or one of them anyway, since it's a vowel), and learn some stuff about people and places.  I didn't work on lots of phonics practice or writing drills.  It's just directed play.

I hope this helps inspire you.  If you come up with other ideas, please post them in the comments so we can all try them, too!

Awesomely Easy Toddler School

I have been waiting for this time to come!  For two years, I have been holding back my teacher-self, but since Cricket recently turned 2, I decided it was ok to let go of the reins a little bit and start a more formal approach to our time at home.  I call it Toddler School.

It's been awesome.

Seriously.  We have both had such a great time in our first official month of "Toddler School."

What is Toddler School?  (Or Tot School or Mommy School or whatever you want to call it.)  It's just a way to introduce some learning into your toddler's daily life.  Most daycare or mother's day out places do this in some form.  This is just the version for the stay-at-home toddlers.  It's not forced.  It's not "sit down and do school" work.  It's fun!   It is just being intentional about teaching while you go through your day.

I have geared our lessons around the alphabet.  We are slowly going through each letter, learning the sound it makes, words that begin with that letter, and famous people and places that begin with it.  This is a very basic way to do a unit study that helps direct both me and her.  It takes us about two weeks to get through one letter, which is fine by me.  I want to enjoy it and really cover the things we learn about, not rush through it.

Ok, so what exactly do we do?  It looks like this.

Calendar:  After breakfast (and after I've finished my coffee) at some point, I'll ask Cricket if she wants to do her calendar.  This is a great little blank calendar I use.  I got mine through Usborne Books. Amazon doesn't sell it, but you can find it here.  (That's not an affiliate link.  Just thought you  might want to find it.)  It just has cute pictures they can color, and all the months are blank, so you can start it whenever you want.  We started ours in April.

Every day, we count all the days up until we get to the new day (which also reinforces one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, and left to right prereading skills).  I write in the new day and she colors it (and usually a couple of other days for good measure).  We say the days of the week together, and we review what month it is.  (She learned the days of the week very quickly just doing this once a day.)  I show her how we can use the calendar to find out what day it is (introducing graph concepts).

This is what it looked like by the end of the month:

Bible Verse:  Then I pull out our Bible verse ring and we say the Bible verses we have learned.  (I printed off these amazing ABC Bible verse cards for free!)  It is so fun to watch her memorize verses, and she is so proud of it!

Coloring Page:  Then we color a picture.  I print off a bunch of coloring pages ahead of time that go with the current letter, and she usually colors one a day.  I try to find two famous people that begin with that letter, one man and one woman.  I also find one place (country, city, continent, whatever), at least one animal (usually we end up with a bunch), and one object. I find my coloring pages just by Googling, but here are a few sites that have been really helpful.

Alphabet made with animals
Pages with the letter and several corresponding pictures
Lots of pages with historical figures and animals
Good pages for women in history and lots more


When she is finished coloring, I display them so we can talk about them throughout the time we are working on that letter.

After I took the A pages down, I taped some page protectors on the cabinets in my kitchen so I can just slide the sheets in easily and not worry about trying to get the tape off the paper each time.  When we finish with one letter, I put all of her coloring sheets in one page protector in a binder.  By the time we're finished, she'll have a whole "book" of pages to look through!

Games:  I have a few "learning games" that I pull out after she finishes coloring.  Cricket loves these and usually asks for them several times a day.  I found them at 1+1+1=1, which is a fantastic site for all kinds of printables and ideas for what she calls "Tot School."  My approach is a little more laid back that hers, so I usually just print off a couple of the games on cardstock, like the three piece puzzle, the lacing card, the shadow matching cards, and the sequencing cards.  Those are perfect for her attention span, and they don't break my printer ink and cardstock budget!

Reading:  Then, we read her library books on the different things we found that start with that letter. Cricket loves to read and will regularly bring me all 10-15 books that we have checked out to read through.  This is great learning time, and great snuggle time!  While we are reading, I make sure to point out examples of our current letter when it comes up.

That's all the "official" time we spend on it.  Usually the whole thing takes about an hour, depending on how many books she wants to read, or how much she gets into her coloring.  It has become a nice morning routine for us, so we both really enjoy it.

The key though, is that I integrate it into the rest of our day, pointing out that she is brave like Amelia Earhart when she climbs the steps by herself, or that she is learning so much like Einstein when she pulls out books to look at.  We talk about words that we see that start with A, find the letter A in her Alphabits, and look for Australia on the world map shower curtain when she goes to the potty.  We use her letter A cookie cutter when she plays with her play dough.  It just becomes a part of our day.

Here is a picture of my "lesson plans" for one day.

I don't really "plan" very far ahead of time.  I usually write most of it down at the beginning of the day.  They are just a few simple things in each subject that I want to cover, or have already covered in our morning time.  When I look at this list, it encourages me!  Look at all that she is learning in just one day!  It reminds me to be intentional, so I will point out a few things about bees when we are playing outside, or tell her how I measure ingredients for her morning smoothie.  Anything is a teachable moment for her!

I hope this helps, and maybe encourages you to try to add a few learning elements to your toddler's day.  The main thing is to keep it simple.  No big curriculum or expensive manipulatives needed.  Just the things you have around the house, some library books, and a few things printed off the Internet! That's all you need!

Next post, I will show you specifics about how we did the letter A unit.