Thursday, July 21, 2011

A Little Pick Me Up Activity – Exercise Cards

So we got out of our Tot School routine and have been slow to get back into the groove of things. It is summer after all, so we’ve had more than a couple of worthwhile distractions going on around here. But now that the fun of family visits is over I felt it was finally time to get going with more routine tot schooling again. Tot schooling really does just “work” for us.

We started things off today with this moving, shaking, & learning activity that I wanted to share. It does require a couple of resources, so it’s not the sort of thing you could do off the cuff, but the resources are free, so with a little preplanning it would be a fun activity that could be quickly repeated. It definitely will be repeated in our house!

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You’ll need these Exercise ABC Cards from Homeschool Share, some kind of ABC manipulatives, and a bag or bowl. I highly recommend laminating the cards. We used our bottlecap letters as our manipulatives. I printed mine out from COAH (letter disks under the phonics category) and glued them to powerade bottle caps, but you could use ABC magnets or anything else you have handy.


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Now you could probably figure it out from here, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what we did.
We took turns drawing letters out of the bag, naming them…


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Finding the matching card…


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And doing the corresponding exercise.
(This was laying on your back and pretending to ride a unicycle.)


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Each exercise contains a word that starts with that letter, so with this simple activity my son got to work on: letter identification, matching (visual discrimination),  letter sounds (phonics), & of course gross motor skills.

And can you tell how proud he was of his jumping jack?
That was his newly acquired skill for the day.

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9 comments:

  1. oh fun! your kids are so adorable- I know all about keeping little boys busy :) new follower from the fun friday link up!

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  2. I love the exercise ABC idea. I tried your link, but it took me to the homeschool share redirect page. I tried searching the homeschool share site, but couldn't get it that way either. Any ideas?

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  3. Oops! Sorry about that. I fixed the link now, but if that still doesn't work for you try searching Homeschool Share for "My Body Lapbook." That should get you to them too. And if you still have trouble just let me know and I'll figure something out!

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  4. There is also a great exercise video for preschoolers that go through the "ABC's" of exercise! Great post and keep those kiddos movin! Thank you for linking up with us on The Sunday Showcase

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  5. Thanks for the heads up Aimee! I'll have to check that out.

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    1. I still cannot find these on that 'Lapbook' site...........

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  6. The new link worked great. Thanks so much. I can't wait to do this with my kids!

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  7. Love this idea and am gonna feature you this week at The SUnday SHowcase!

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  8. I LOVE this! What a great idea! I love anything that gets the kids moving, and working in a little learning is such a HUGE bonus!
    Happily following from the Sunday Showcase. I would love it if you would follow back. Stop by my blog and say hi! :)

    Mandi
    boredombustingmommy.blogspot.com

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Thanks for your comments!