What fun and creative ways do you teach the basics?

I am trying to think of fun ways to teach the kids these basics since from just the fridge phonics deal, they are finding letters and naming them or making that letter sound. I want to teach it while they are interested. Any fun ideas? I would appreciate them. THanks!

 

the elmo abc video tought my kids their abcs..

as for colors..

just anything that surrounds them ask what color..

shapes are on flash cards for age 2.5-3

its wking so far.. im not creative.

 

I found these 8 X 11 1/2 cards at Cosco that have the letters of the alphabet on them. I have hung them up on the wall in their playroom and will occasionally point out some letters, or ask one of the boys to point out a letter.

Also books; my guys love to be read to and I take every opportunity to point out colors or shapes or amounts when I am reading to him.

There are some great toddler books out there that go over the basics in a fun way too.

I just try to make it a part of the day, nothing too structured, and when they lose interest we just go on to something else!

 

I found pushing my oldest on the swing long so we use that time to sing abc's. One letter for each push. Then when she got to know her letters we started the sounds of the letters and some words with each push ie a is for apple, b is for bear etc. I imagine I will do the same thing with these guys.

 

numbers: We count things we see or count blocks as we stack them ( one of my girls can count to three and the other can count to five)
Colors: point at things and say what color
Abcs: so far just the abc song we are concentrating on numbers right now

 

Colors and shapes I pointed out in conversation. For letters and numbers I got foam ones that stick to the tub. They get gross after a couple of months, but the girls loved them, and by the time I threw them out they knew all their letters and numerals by sight.

 

We sang the ABC song while they brushed their teeth. As for colors, we did jelly beans. They got to eat one when they knew the color. Jason had his colors down in 1 day.

 

The letter factory video is also a great video for ABCs. A letter of the week is good. All projects and during car rides make things and point out things with that letter.

 

I heard a neat one today- Someone in Family Fun Magazine wrote they taught their kids the days of the week by putting up a display with a different color card for each day of the week, in sequential order, then put a magnet or sticky with the child's name on the current day. Then, when they refer to the day something will happen, they refer to it by name and color, so that the child can associate how many days till the goal item/activity is acquired. Neat! Teaches color, written name recognition, and days of the week/time concepts for age 2-3.

 

We have Preschool Prep DVD's: Meet the Shapes, Meet the numbers, Meet the Letters. And we have some knob puzzles that have shapes, numbers, animals, etc. They love them and learn them quickly. The dvd's are really annoying, but the kids love them and have learned a lot from them.

 

The best way to teach these things is in your everyday environment and conversations.

Numbers: Gosh, you can count anything! We count when we clean up a lot (putting things back in a tub). When we are reading books, we count theobjects in pictures. We sing lots of number songs (i.e. Five Little Ducks) so that they learned pretty early how to hold up their fingers to reflect the correct number.

Colors: Bring it up often when playing with toys. We look for things when we are driving (Let's see if we can find a BLUE truck). We also have a few sorting toys that they can sort by color (counting bears, a fishing game, stacking blocks).

ABCs: I have not even started with them yet on this. We sing the song. And they can identify a B (for Ben) and an H (for Hannah), but that is from me writing their name on their papers. They also see letters on buildings and point out, "ABCs mommy." So they understand the concept. I figure we have LOADS of time before we even need to worry about this.

 

I am just begun using flash cards working on shapes, numbers 1-5. The boys are intrigued and love them.

 

My kids LOVE Leap Frog's Letter Factory Movie. They want to watch it repeatedly and since it is only 30 minutes I allow them to watch it 2 times every couple of days. I also find that the best way to teach them has been to get them to interact with me while we are out and about. I point to signs and ask what the first letter is, or I grab a cooking ingredient and ask them the letters in the words on the label.

As for learning their numbers, I do the same sort of thing. When we go out to dinner my husband and I like to keep them busy by having them count the people at our table, at neighboring tables.. They count the silverware, the french fries in their plates.. They figured out numbers fairly quickly when we started telling them "3 more bites" and so on. Math is a lot of fun for my husband and I so the kids advanced quickly. They know how to subtract even, and we used the same techniques stated above.

To teach them colors, we would play the "I spy with my little eye" game where you tell the child that you see an object of a certain color and they try to find it. It keeps them busy and at the same time, under control.

 

ditto the leap frog letter factory dvd. My boys love it

 

For counting we have for a long time, hid before going to bed. We take turns on who stands outside to count, we only hide in the kids room. First we started with counting to 10 then went to 20. My kids knew how to count at a very young age and this was a fun way to do it.

 

Ditto to Kate about just using opportunities in everyday life. For colors and numbers, we count and say the color of nearly everything we see. We do it a LOT when we are reading their books, especially their picture books. They still don't quite get the 1-1 association of counting, but they can count up to ten. (And Natalie cracked me up last night by counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-"eleventeen" -- LOL!!) They love for me to hold their finger and point to the pictures as we count. (And since they also speak Spanish they want to do it in Spanish a lot of the time. "Uno, Mommy!" they say when I start with "one" and they want to do it in Spanish.) For colors we name the color of everything in the books, of the blocks they were playing with, the clothes we were wearing, etc., and we make a game of it, "Who is wearing a red shirt?" "Which one is the green tractor?" etc.

For letters, they are pretty good at their letter recognition and can name at least one word that starts with each letter. This is from a few things that are just worked into our daily playing: They have an alphabet puzzle and each letter has a picture under it, so when we do the puzzle I always say the letter and the name of the picture, e.g, "A - airplane! B - butterfly! W - wagon!" They also have several ABC books that they love (the ones that come to mind are the Curious George, the Dr. Seuss, and the PD Eastman) so they learn a lot from those. They are better at recognizing the name of the letter when I say it aloud than on seeing the letter written. For a lot of the letters in the puzzle if they are doing it on their own they will say A for the letter and then name of the picture it goes with (so they say A - elephant, A - ice cream while holding the E and the I) but if I say, "What is E for?" they answer correctly with "Elephant!" There are a couple of letters that they are obsessed with -- W (and by extension M) and O -- and point them out whenever they see them. (Seriously they are obsessed with W -- everything looks like a W to them. I have a necklace with two hearts joined together and they say "W!" excitedly when I wear it. Natalie likes to pull the corner off my slice of cheese on my sausage muffin every morning and she screams "W!" when she pulls it off -- it's always vaguely triangle shaped. I don't know what it is about W, but they are in love with that letter, especially Natalie.)

Anyway my point is that we don't really do much formally but just try to build on their natural interest in it and work it into our daily play and activities.

 

not sure if they are quite ready for this but i'm sure you could set it up in a way that makes it appropriate for their level. i was thinking you could make an ABC book with them. it can be very simple and you could do one letter or a couple of letters a day (or whenever you have time). you could do this for numbers, colors and shapes too. you could cut out pictures from magazines or activity books of things that start with a certain letter. you could use construction paper or just plain computer paper. Label the top of the page (or you could put it in all 4 corners or whatever) with the letter. To make it to their level, if you go through the magazine or pictures first, you could label with black marker the letter right in the middle of the picture. So if you are working on the letter A, you could have them help you find pics that have a big A marked on it. "Look, there's an A. This is an apple. It must start with the letter A. Let's put it on the A page." if it's not colored (like from a coloring book or an activity book) you could have them color it and then you could glue it on to the page. when the book is done you could either staple it or hole punch it and tie with string or you could take it to a place like kinkos or some place that binds books for you. If you really want to spend the bucks, you could have it laminated and make a cover page for it (or have the kids make a cover page ) and it will be something special for them to keep for years to come. They can even bring it to pre-school or pre-k or kindergarten when they start and share with the class.

For numbers, you could label each page with a number and then glue something of that number. You could even make your own Cheerio book (they actually have one in print but you could easily do your own). or you could do one button on the page for 1, 2 toothpics for 2, 3 pictures of babies, etc. you get the idea i'm sure. i used to do these activities with my kindergarten class but at a slightly higher level. it is so much fun. i would get them laminated and it would become a favorite book in our classroom library.

 

I have some ideas. The kids could write their numbers, letters or names in shaving cream, pudding or cool whip. The kids could eat different things with a different color for the day eg green day eat beans, peas or have a "p" day eat popcorn, popscicles). White icing can be dyed with food coloring, so can cool whip and marshmellows can be dipped in food coloring to make colored prints on paper and then eat, just be carefeul eatng the marshmellows. Water painting with big bushes on sidewalks in the summer and fall days are fun. Colored chalk is fun also. Fingerpainting, playdoh can be used to roll out letters and numbers. Letter stickers can be used to find the beginning letter or cutting out letters from magazines. We use to make large letters and then have the kids tell us thngs that started with that letter(with some hints of course).

Hands on learning can make children remember things easier. HTH

 

Chalking...last summer they were obsessed with chalking. So, when I tired of drawing animals, I started with shapes and ABCs. They learned all of their uppercase ABCs and some lowercase. They learned the following shapes: circle, square, rectangle, octagon, pentagon, trapezoid, marquis, star & diamond. I ran out of shapes.. :laughing:

There is nothing better than learning through play.

 

QUOTE(micheleinohio @ Jun 27 2007, 07:24 PM) [snapback]309740[/snapback]
The letter factory video is also a great video for ABCs.


My nephew had this. It is amazing and then there is the next one when they are ready called 'word factory'

 

A big thank you for all the great ideas! I would thank you all if I could with the little "thank you" button....but it doesn't work that way! Now that I have a handful of fun things to do and use, I will see how we do.

 

I'm lurking from the 6-12yo forum, but can I add one more? For colors, take the eating idea a step further, and have a day devoted to a particular color. Dress entirely in e.g. blue, do crafts with blue stuff, use blue plates for lunch, etc. etc. Focus completely on a color for the day (especially the colors they're having difficulty with).

And yes, as others have said, read, read, read and discuss!

 

We have colors and numbers in their room. We adhered the ABC's on their doors and everynight we look at our ABC's and 123's. We also have each of the panels on their doors painted a primary color and go through those too. They can point to whatever color, number or shape we ask. We also have puzzles and that is how we taught them their shapes and now they point shapes out in everyday activities.