power solids

We had a lazy day at home today. I was excited about that, but realized I needed to pull something new out of my bag of tricks if we were going to make it through the day!
So... I went and grabbed my POWER SOLIDS off the shelf. Unfortunately, I didn't have any dry beans and didn't want to deal with the mess of rice. We'd already had a somewhat unfortunate water mess and I wasn't ready for another. So noodles it was!
We scooped, dumped, poured, measured, and had a blast! I realized I don't use terms like pyramid, cone, cylinder, and prism very often. (Do you?) So, we're going to get these out more often, play with different materials, and figure out what it all means!
At dinner when he was telling Daddy about our new toy - he said "you know the blue things Mommy used when she was a teacher?" Well for now, we're just having fun sticking noodles in the blue things - guess the names need a little more practice.

post-its pt.2

Ok. I have to admit it. I really do have a drawer full of post-it notes. Have you seen the "teacher" ones? There's ones that tell time, have word endings, money, and of course - the alphabet. Well today Conner was asking me why there was a "1" in the middle of a word. He meant a lower case l - but I can totally understand the confusion! I've been thinking for a while that I need to be more deliberate about using lower case letters too, but this pretty much solidified the thought. I've always thought it's easier to start with upper case letters, and I still hold to that thought - but you've got to learn it all eventually.

This idea isn't exactly a new one, it's just our little thing we had fun doing today. I got out my alphabet post-its, and stuck them on the wall. That's (one of) the great things about Post-Its - easy on, easy off. We talked about how each letter has a big (upper case) and a small (lower case). I made sure to use both terms. We looked at the pictures already on the Post-Its, and put them in alphabetical order.

Then as he ate his breakfast, I asked him if he wanted me to draw him some pictures of his own. He picked some words, some I came up with myself. Then I wrote the word (all lower case) and he matched up the word/picture with the letter on the wall. Luckily the words he picked were mostly things I could (kind of) draw. You might notice there is a snake AND a worm - I guess he can tell the difference??!! I consider myself creative, but NOT artistic!
Another great thing - they're high enough that my daughter can't reach them, but right at his eye level. I figure we'll add to it every so often, and when he gets bored, take them down and do something else.