Mommy-Made Workbooks

As a teacher, I was not a fan of worksheets. I personally think there are better ways for children to learn that are more interactive than a worksheet.or a workbook.  That being said, there are also some moments when it is necessary to administer a paper/pencil activity to see if a student understands what is being taught. 

For the last month, I have been going through my 10 years of teaching supplies. My main goal was to get rid of my storage unit, so we moved everything into the garage.  This gave me a chance to sort through everything and really evaluate what is necessary for teaching in the future, and what is not.  I came across many things I have not used in many years and some things that I have never used.  A lot of things got tossed in the recycling or trash, and I was able to sell some things to new teachers at a yard sale.  All of my neatly organized binders were taken apart and put into a file cabinet (which I do not like but it takes up less space than 30 notebooks of files). As I went through the notebooks to file them, I pulled out pages that reinforced letters, numbers, colors, and shapes.  I turned them into workbooks.  Each workbook focuses on a different skill and the activities range in ability. For example, in the letter workbook there are simple matching upper and lower case letters and then there is also writing words that begin with a particular letter.

workbooks in old report folders that were in my teaching supplies

I also created one that is write and wipe with dry erase markers.  I have a laminator at home so I just laminated the sheets I wanted and put them in a folder.  I can add more or make it more challenging in the future.  Included are sheets for tracing the alphabet as well as his first and last name. (worksheet for name tracing was generated here.)  There is also number writing practice and a sheet to circle the correct amount of pictures that corresponds with the number.  I particularly like this book because it is reusable.  Eventually, the sheets may end up in a larger three ring notebook and they can also be reused when Brooke is old enough to practice these skills.

examples of two pages in the write and wipe book

Teachable Moments

As a teacher, sometimes the lesson plan goes in another direction if something comes up.  That is called a “teachable moment.”  Teachable moments happen with your own kids as well.  Here are 5 that happened recently with Derek.

1. We were on our weekly trip to Giant for groceries and we always go to Starbucks first for a treat.  He gets chocolate milk and I get a coffee.  This time of year, a pumpkin spice latte.  You know the little green things that you put in the cup to prevent spilling?  Well, there were 4 left in the container.  Derek says, “There are 3 sticks.”  I asked him to count again and he did, “1, 2, 3, 4.  There are 4, Mommy.”  I said, “That’s right.  Now, Mommy needs one so how many are left?”  He counted and came up with 3.  Then he said, “If you take one more there’s 2 and one more there’s one.”  He did all of this without counting.  AKA: mental math with simple subtraction.
2. On the way to school one day we practiced some phonemic awareness.  The key to phonemic awareness is that it is auditory.  This is the first step before phonological awareness and phonics.  So anyway, what I did was ask him, “Which friend’s name starts with /m/?” And he said “Mason.”  We did the same for Sam, Dean, Bryce, and Haidyn.  He also noticed that Dean and Derek start the same.  Prior to this we had only done games where I asked him “What letter does B-B-Brooke start with?”  This reversed the game for him.
3. The other day we went to eat and I had a soda.  He said “Soda sounds like Yoda.”  This led into a game of generating rhyming words!  We would give him a word and he came up with a rhyme or two.  Even if they were Dr. Seuss words (made up words) it still counts because he is hearing the same sound in the word.
4. On another trip to Giant, he was in the grocery cart and naming the shapes of the containers in the cart.  Now, I don’t mean square, circle, and triangle.  He was saying cube, cylinder, and sphere. He started this on his own so then I started asking him to show me something that is a cylinder etc. Below is a picture of the items he was naming in the cart.

cylinder, cylinder, cube, sphere

      5. Driving around today he noticed the STOP sign and said, “That says stop.”  I asked him to spell stop and he did as he looked at the sign.  Then he wanted me to spell other words for him.  I wanted him to try to spell some too.  He spelled out the word “go” when I sounded it out but then he insisted that I spell everything.

It is easy to turn everyday activities into teachable moments with your toddler/preschooler and even older children.  To him, it’s just a game, but I know that he is building a foundation in his learning.