5 (More!) Good Christmas Books (3-5 year olds)

I introduced some lovely concepts related to this festive season last year, from elves to chimneys, so this year we got some more! As Santiago has a dearth of english book stores (and my poor little iPad crashed *sad face* ....*tears*) I ordered some from scholastic - that were bulked ordered by his school. Expensive stuff, but good nonetheless. Here are some good ones! 

Halloween Books & Crafts for 3+ yr olds

This is the first time we are living on *that* side of the world which celebrates Halloween (i.e. without sounding like a total wannabe!) So it's the first time I've introduced this concept to my kid. Well technically they did have a Halloween costume dress up party in his earlier preschool in India (I stitched him a cute little Fred Flintstone Costume) but he was only 1.5 yr old then. 

Buying English books in Chile is difficult. There are gorgeous bookstores full of Spanish books with only a teeny tiny shelf with English ones, if at all. So I've resorted to a lot of begging and borrowing from anyone and everyone I know *and* buying e-books from Kindle. I'd already stopped buying paperbacks for my reading purposes four years ago and now I don't mind making the subtle shift for my kid too. My latest obsession is with Kindle Unlimited, which allows you to 'borrow' up to 10 e-books at a time for a monthly fee. Want a 11th book? No problem, just 'return' one of the earlier 10! Obviously only a limited number of books are available under Kindle unlimited, but I'm still pretty kicked about the wide range of options available! 

So here are the books & crafts we're indulging in this Halloween month.

16 Easy Summer Projects for 3 year olds

Summer is officially over in this part of the planet, there was our Art Studio, summer camp, visiting grandparents, playground, parks, chasing cats, eloping to the neighbours house (any neighbour will do), chatting up with random people, spending hours at book stores. But it also meant being indoors for long periods of time. 

The secret behind the mantra "let them be bored" is "give them more activities" Yes! you read that correctly. "Normalisation" is actually a Montessori philosophy, i.e. when children emerge from focusing attention on using a material, they are calmer and happier. As time went on, Maria Montessori saw this positive change in their personalities become more permanent. She called this process "Normalisation". I have witnessed this first hand with my kid! Giving him something to do tick marks being engaged, being happy, AND quality time playing with mommy. 

Ten minutes of quality 'activity' time results in at least an hour full of solo play! 

Fizzy Word Building

We just recently started learning word formation, i.e. M-A-T is Mat and so on. He got the concept, but it wasn't as exciting as learning sight words (he ie *obsessed* with the 7 sight words he knows!). So I brought out the big guns, his *favorite* baking soda and vinegar!

Reading Aloud: The EASIEST way to 'Talk' to your child!

The whole world tells you to talk to your child as much as possible. For e.g. don't just say "this flower is so pretty!" but describe it as much as possible. I personally think that's rubbish! We walk down the road every single day and I'd be completely mad if I had to describe flowers to him every day! I love silences. I love it that when we walk down from school and pass by the park we don't have to chit chat, don't have any agenda, don't have "do" anything. Just relax and soak up nature!

We DO need to talk to children though, but have you wondered WHAT is it that people talk about? Do you feel perplexed and out of material to talk to children? They can't talk much about what happened in school and you can't talk politics or game of thrones, then what?

There are two things I do. First answer each and every question of his, properly and immediately. All the whats, whys and hows. I LOVE his curiosity and sometimes have to take a moment to articulate a response without dumbing it down. Secondly, read him books!

8 Alphabet Activities

The easiest way to practise alphabet recognition and beginning sounds is bringing attention to them during reading aloud. And we did some activities too. I'm listing them according to level of difficulty, as some were done quite recently and some were done several months back!

Fizzy Sight Words

My kids currently in the 'in between' phase of being thorough with his ABCs, and word formation i.e. M-A-T is Mat. While we are busy practising rhyming words and syllable counting, I thought why not introduce some sight words! I taught him 4 over a month, and he could not have been more excited!

I've just started using a craft stick as a pointer when we read, as he loo..oves being part of the narration. The 4 words The, And, A and To, are generously sprinkled in every page of every book. So I restrict pointing to just 1 or 2 books a day! 

 

We combined sight words with fizzy science on a saturday morning. Placed a few of his playdoh cutters to arrange them into sight words over a tray. He put some baking soda inside each alphabet. Then he mixed paint (Orange was his color of the day!) with vinegar in his beaker and poured the mix into a spraying bottle.

Pre-writing Practice: At Age 3

I'm writing this post since I've seen a big difference in my 3 year olds prewriting skills. About six months back, when we started the alphabet packs, he could just about trace a straight line with a tear drop shaped crayon, and now he's zigging and zagging and tracing pictures!

Cutting Practice

'Twas just one of those days. When my tiny tot suddenly showed interest in cutting! And he went on a rampage!

Story telling with Puppets: Julia Donaldson's Room on the Broom

It's not surprising that my 3 y.o son Looo..oved Julia Donaldson’s “Room on the Broom”. I happened to see the character puppets on their website and got them printed right away! 

Pasted them on Popsicle sticks and made some more items such as the cone, bone, bow, hat, beast etc from felt. A plastic cup played the role of the cauldron.

It was definitely exciting to tell the story via puppets, ESP the part where the dragon chases the flying witch (we run around the whole house!). But after a coupla times he actually had the sequence memorised. And I realised what an excellent tool puppets make as a crucial step towards literacy. Sure I make all the books I read to him interactive, but puppets is taking that to a different level, it's HIM telling ME the story!

We also used it for phonics activities, as he JUST got the concept of alphabet sounds. I laid down all puppets and asked him to recognise the beginning sound and place the alphabets with the respective puppets. This was especially exciting  for me - since it was the first few times that he GOT phonics, after months of learning the alphabet.

Is your child thorough with his ABC recognition, yet clueless about letter sounds?

All the alphabet packs and alphabet related activities in the last few months have done good w.r.t. Letter Recognition. But I still couldn't figure out how to teach my 3 y.o letter Sounds. When I would ask him the letter sound or make him repeat after me, he either didn't understand or wasn't interested. That's when Dr. Suess' ABC blue black book stepped came as a big help!

It's so silly and funny! And perhaps it's the quick succession of beginning sound words that did the trick of drilling the concept of phonics into his brain!