DIY Workbook - Make a Checklist

Checklists are a great learning tool! I made this one for our trip to the zoo. I chose to use words, but you could use pictures as well.
I asked my son to figure out the first letter of the animal we saw, and then find a word on the list starting with that letter. It was a good exercise to work on spelling.
You can really simplify this, making a checklist of colors to look for around the house, or a checklist of toys to collect in their room. The options are pretty endless.
Checklists are also great for math. You can add up how many you checked versus how many remain to be found, subtract the number you found from the total on the list etc. Just customize it to your kid's level. A checklist could have 3 items or 20 items!

National Geographic Little Kids One Year Subscription, Just $12 | Plum District Deals

And one more Plum deal I just have to share!  I love this magazine for my 4 year old, and my almost 2 year old loves the pictures too!  It is small, and has lots of fun matching, spelling, look and find type games.  It is kind of old school and refreshing in the digital age!  $1 per issue?  Yeah, it's worth it!

I sometimes add these to the DIY workbook too.  I added one the other day that had pictures with the name of the item below, and you had to fill in the first letter.  Perfect workbook addition!!

National Geographic Little Kids One Year Subscription, Just $12 | Plum District Deals:

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DIY Workbook - Letter Art Pages

I have been a little slow on the DIY Workbook ideas lately, but I saw this idea on the KCL website and thought it was very creative!  I love projects that incorporate learning through play.  Perfect!

5. Letter Collage

We love making letter collages. To do this, I just write an upper and lower-case letter on a sheet of paper. We talk about the sound the letter makes, and then I let my little guy decorate the paper with things that begin with the letter. For the letter “G” we did green glitter and for the letter “Y” we did yarn. Quick, easy and fun!

I am excited to try and think of things to do for every letter.  Buttons, zebra stripes, pipe cleaners, leaves...this is going to be fun:)

This time of year you can get some great deals on school supplies, so make sure to pick up some $.25 glue and crayons this week at staples, and maybe a binder to keep all of these beautiful creations!

DIY Project - A Book About Me

I got this idea from a book called "Curious George and Me", in which kids can fill in the blanks throughout the book with details about themselves.  This idea is so easy to replicate in a do-it-yourself project!  Here are some ideas for the pages in the book:

All About Me - name, age, birthday, where I live
My Family - pictures and names of family.  Pets you have, pets you wish you had.
Things I like - favorite color, food, game, place to go, book etc.
My handprint - trace or stamp a handprint
My first (you pick the big event that is relevant) - sleepover, day of school, time on an airplane etc
Where I live - type of house/apartment, trees, yard etc.  You can also ask how many rooms/doors/sinks etc are in the house.
A story written by me - you can write it verbatim
What I love about my mommy/daddy etc - also write verbatim
Draw a picture of me, my family
When I grow up I want to be...
I can write my own name...
Words I can spell...

You can tailor the book to suit your own child.  The Curious George book, for example, has a whole section on school, and you child might not go yet.  You can use stickers and crafts and decorate the book when you are done.  What a great keepsake too!  Better yet, do one every summer and have them to compare and look back on.

DIY Workbook - Color by Number

I always see color by number exercises in pre k workbooks.  I decided to make my own with a leftover print out from my daughter's birthday craft. I found the imagine online and just printed it at home. Then I added the numbers and a legend. Easy!

DIY Workbooks for Preschoolers

I have been wanting to start this up forever, and today was the day I finally took that first step!  I love kids' workbooks, but I always wish that they had a bit more variety to keep my son interested.  He likes to trace letters, but maybe just for one page, and then move on to a maze, or a match up game.  But, I don't want to spend money on a workbook that is going to sit on the shelf!  So, I decided to create my own.  I gave my son a binder and a three hole punch, which are, in and of themselves, very cool:)
My first "game" for the book was a word find.  I photocopied a page from Green Eggs and Ham, and asked my son to circle the word "not" every time he could find it.  This book is good for repetition.  If you have an older child, you could make a list of words to find and have them cross them out.
I think this is easier and more useful than a traditional word find for pre-readers.  All those jumbled letters and changing directions can be too much.  And, if they have no interest in the task, at least you haven't wasted money on a book, right??
I'm going to keep posting more ideas to add to the DIY workbook, so stay tuned to see how the book fills up!

DIY Workbook - First Letter Match Up

This DIY project works on the ability to sound out the first letter of a word.  Like I have done before, I used cut out letters for this because my son doesn't write yet, but if your kids do you can just have them write the letter in the space.

I looked through some magazines and grocery flyers and put together a few pages with the pictures taped down and the corresponding letters loose.  I asked my son to find and glue the letter that starts the word in the picture.  I chose to put the picture on the right and have him glue on the left, because it made more sense to me that the first letter would be positioned that way.

Almost all workbook exercises can be replicated at home without using hardly anything in materials.  Next time you are at a store like Lakeshore or Staples take a look though a book and see what you could do at home without buying anything!

Project for pre-readers

I was looking for a way to work phonics and early reading skills into a fun activity, so I started this project with my son.  I love that we can work on it for a bit, and then put it away for a few weeks and come back to it.
I took a book with blank pages and put the letters of the alphabet, one per page, through the book in order. Then, we looked at our sticker collection (which is quite impressive) and in magazines for pictures, and worked to figure out what letter they start with.  Then we just paste or stick the picture into the book on the appropriate page.  It was a great exercise in sounding out the letters that start different words, and it continues to be useful because we can look through it and try out words on a given page and see how they all start with the same sound or sounds.
Pictured is the busiest page of the book so far - B!
The best part of this project is that you can save old magazines, grocery flyers, store advertisements to get the pictures, so aside from the book there is not a lot of expense involved:)

DIY Workbook - The Very Hungry Caterpillar Templates

I printed these templates and love both ideas.  They are both connected to the Very Hungry Caterpillar books, which is perfect for my house because it is a book both my kids love!

This first link you can print a template with caterpillars and butterflies in varying sizes, and organize them according to size.

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/Very_Hungry_Caterpillar.SIZES.pdf

This next one is like a storyboard.  You cut out the pictures and ask your kid to put them in order of the story, or make up their own story.

http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/hungrycaterpillar/sequencing.htm

The sequencing is a great activity to make a keepsake book craft as well.  I love to have my kids put pictures in a book and then I write verbatim what they said.  In this case you could have your child put the cards in order and then tell you the story, which you record and put it all together into a book.  How cool!

DIY Workbook - Patterns

Patterns have got to be one of the easiest exercises to do yourself, and because of the endless variations they can be great for a variety of ages.  Patterns can be simple or very complicated, and can involve a single or multiple variables.

I used stickers to build this worksheet for my son, but if you don't have stickers you can just draw shapes, and use different colors if you want.  You really don't need anything fancy to make a fun and challenging game for your little ones!

DIY Workbook - Number Recognition

I was talking to a friend the other day about working on number recognition with toddlers, and I had an idea for a project to help kids recognize and identify small numbers (1-10).  When my son finished the first one I made he immediately wanted me to make another, so I think it was a success!

I just used some of the bulk stickers I ordered from Amazon at least 2 years ago.  I think I paid around $5 and I got literally hundreds of these reward size stickers (if I can find a similar deal I will post about it!).  I put  a given number of stickers in a row and a blank space at the end of the page.  I asked my son to count the stickers and then find the corresponding number and glue it at the end of the row.  He cannot write yet, but if your child can you can eliminate the gluing step.

For older kids that are working on reading and written number recognition you could do the same project but write the number out instead of using stickers.

DIY Workbook - Starter Fill in the Blanks

Here's another idea for a do it yourself workbook page - no need to spend money on practice books!!

I love the idea of fill in the blanks, but my son is a pre-writer, so I never get to use them.  He does, however, love to spell, so I wanted to try a different way and see if he would get the concept.

I wrote a simple word, tree, on the top of the page, and gave him the letters to glue in the right places below.  he got it, though he insisted some of the letters should go sideways:)  I think now that he has the concept I can do fill in the blanks in a more traditional layout, but use cut out letters since he cannot write them yet.  

I am thinking I will try out my first one with the titles of some of his favorite books (i.e. The _at in the _at).  

I'll post some variations after I try them out on my little guinea pig:)

DIY Workbooks - Print your own materials

There are tons of great resources online for great printable worksheets.  The site I link to below is one I use all the time. A project that I have going on with my son is to look at different countries and keep worksheets about them (more on this later!), so I will often use this website to find a letter tracing worksheet related to an animal that lives there, or something that ties into the information we are learning.  Google away - you will find a ton of great free stuff out there!

Multicultural Preschool Activities and Crafts:

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DIY Workbook - Color Match Columns

I have seen this practice in lots of workbooks, so of course I tried to make my own:)  In many workbooks they ask the kids to cut out pictures and then organize them into categories indicated and glue them into the columns.  This was the most basic form of that exercise that I could think of, and from here I can make it more advanced.
I put the color pieces in a box and asked him to close his eyes when he picked them. Then he had to glue them in the right column.  We also worked in some math because we knew there were 4 in each color (i.e. we have 2 red, how many are left to find?).  It was also kid of a race to see which color would "win".
Definitely planning on doing similar projects with variations - he really enjoyed this one.  I think next I will do sort by shape, but use different colors.