This week's theme has been communication. The Mail day was a huge hit in our house.
We started with the circle time activity, placing the month's phonics cards in envelopes and having the girls take turns opening them and identifying the letters. I had Miss M go one step further by finding something in the room that started with that letter (we did floor, pillow and kick the ball--a stretch but all we could come up with for /k/). Miss M then decided it would be a fun game to take turns closing our eyes while the other person hid the letters around the room. She played happily for twenty minutes. It was also a great way to practice the prepositions "in", "on", "under" and "between".
I buy diaper wipes from Amazon Mom and as a result end up with one new container about every four weeks. I rounded up three of these containers to use for the letter sorting activity. Since Miss M is very familiar with the three letters of the month, I added a little difficulty by giving each container a 3-letter "address", all letters that look fairly similar and that she sometimes gets confused. I made three copies of each letter on cut up pieces of index card and gave them to her to sort. Littlest even participated for a few minutes. Miss M loves to let her choose a card and then shows her where to put it. Since Littlest loves putting objects inside other objects, it was a win-win. This was another extended play activity and is still sitting out in the living room to be played at will.
Since Miss M has a much longer attention span than Littlest, she needed a filler activity. I recently bought a small bag of craft pompoms for $2; I dumped them into a bowl and gave her a spoon and yet another diaper wipes container. She happily transferred pompoms for several minutes. This easy, cheap and portable activity will be coming with us on our road trip this weekend.
For our final activity, we read the included storybook (I loved the emphasis on engineering and the fact that the kids had to try several ideas before coming up with one that worked) and decorated postcards to send to the grandmothers. Miss M insisted I draw the stick figure on her swing set but I had her add the facial features, fingers and toes so it wasn't just my drawing. She dictated a message to my mom and we wrote a note to mother-in-law on Littlest's card, added addresses and stamps and marched them out to the mailbox. Since
MGT includes a similar activity every week, I think this may become a tradition. I used to love getting mail and it actually makes me sad that this medium is used so little now. On our upcoming trip I think I will buy a few postcards for the girls to dictate messages/draw pictures on and mail them to ourselves so they can have the experience of getting things in the mail, too.
We started with the circle time activity, placing the month's phonics cards in envelopes and having the girls take turns opening them and identifying the letters. I had Miss M go one step further by finding something in the room that started with that letter (we did floor, pillow and kick the ball--a stretch but all we could come up with for /k/). Miss M then decided it would be a fun game to take turns closing our eyes while the other person hid the letters around the room. She played happily for twenty minutes. It was also a great way to practice the prepositions "in", "on", "under" and "between". 
I buy diaper wipes from Amazon Mom and as a result end up with one new container about every four weeks. I rounded up three of these containers to use for the letter sorting activity. Since Miss M is very familiar with the three letters of the month, I added a little difficulty by giving each container a 3-letter "address", all letters that look fairly similar and that she sometimes gets confused. I made three copies of each letter on cut up pieces of index card and gave them to her to sort. Littlest even participated for a few minutes. Miss M loves to let her choose a card and then shows her where to put it. Since Littlest loves putting objects inside other objects, it was a win-win. This was another extended play activity and is still sitting out in the living room to be played at will.
Since Miss M has a much longer attention span than Littlest, she needed a filler activity. I recently bought a small bag of craft pompoms for $2; I dumped them into a bowl and gave her a spoon and yet another diaper wipes container. She happily transferred pompoms for several minutes. This easy, cheap and portable activity will be coming with us on our road trip this weekend.
For our final activity, we read the included storybook (I loved the emphasis on engineering and the fact that the kids had to try several ideas before coming up with one that worked) and decorated postcards to send to the grandmothers. Miss M insisted I draw the stick figure on her swing set but I had her add the facial features, fingers and toes so it wasn't just my drawing. She dictated a message to my mom and we wrote a note to mother-in-law on Littlest's card, added addresses and stamps and marched them out to the mailbox. Since MGT includes a similar activity every week, I think this may become a tradition. I used to love getting mail and it actually makes me sad that this medium is used so little now. On our upcoming trip I think I will buy a few postcards for the girls to dictate messages/draw pictures on and mail them to ourselves so they can have the experience of getting things in the mail, too.
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