Welcome to Teeny Tot Tuesday and my first Link Up! That’s right I wanted you all to be able to have a chance to link up your Tot ideas as well, so I finally signed up for Linky Tools so you can all share ideas for Teeny Tot Tuesday as well!
I’ve been having so much fun with the Teeny Tot lately! She’s really into doing her own school. My only issue now is she wants new things all the time and I’m running out of ideas! So I’ve started adding in some games for her. She doesn’t always know how to play them by the rules, but I’ve found that they’re great for things like sorting letters, colors, logical thinking, and fine-motor skill practice!
The Magnetic Match Rings is a really fun game, and she does know how to play this one. It’s fairly simple, it comes with double sided picture cards that she has to re-create using the actual magnets. The trick is to place the magnets in the proper direction so they “float” above one another.
This game is called “Toot and Otto”. It’s sort of a version of Connect Four. So I had her try to put all the “Os” in one row, “Ts” in the next etc. She loved sliding the letters into the slots, great for fine-motor skills, as well as letter identification for O and T!
Here’s a fun color matching game that I made her. I found these oversized colorful magnetic clips at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Then I created some colored wooden disks for her to clip them onto for a matching game. After she’s done matching all of the colors, she tells me what they all are. Sometimes I’ll instruct her to do a certain color as well, but she usually does this on her own.
Her absolute FAVORITE activity is “Dotting” as she calls it. She really can’t get enough of the Do-A-Dot markers, so I let her do the Letter K today. I have it on this small colored cookie tray to save my lovely Ikea desk! (The tray is from a KidWords Activity kit I found at a used curriculum fair, I found the entire kit here too if it helps any!)
She loves these too, they’re Holgate Toys Geo Lacing Shapes. I found them at a local teacher store and I pull these out all the time!
One more thing the Teeny Tot is loving now is the Leapfrog Letter Factory! I think my kids practically learned all their letters and sounds from this DVD! I highly recommend it!
Your daughter and my son are almost exactly the same age, so I love seeing what all you’re doing with her (and amazed by what she does at such a young age!) Anyway, with your mention of Letter Factory, I wanted to make sure you knew about the sequel to that movie. My son learned all of his letters and sounds from The Letter Factory too, but now he loves watching the Talking Words Factory. It’s about making words. They do each of the short vowels and make words with them. (cat, fat, hat… met, get, let… etc.) It’s really cute. I know you’ve probably heard of it, but just wanted to make sure! Thanks for such a great blog!
What a great idea, Erica! I am so glad you are doing a link party and I can’t wait to see all the link ups!!
Looking at these pictures remind me of my childhood. They are having fun with it.
Hi!
I hope this is okay, I linked up an old post from last year to go along with the Leap Frog Letter Factory video. It has a link within it to picture cards that were created by Jessica at Running With Scissors. They are great and my daughter LOVED them! Hope you and your readers enjoy them also!
❤Mrs. McKown
Little Literacy Learners
I love the Leap Frog series! I have a 5, 3 , and 1 year old and they love watching them. My oldest had a hard time picking up the sounds a couple of years ago, but we found this series and I haven’t had that problem with any of my kids since! We now own all of them 🙂
Unfortunately the link to Rainbow Resource for the blue magnetic tray says “NOT AVAILABLE.” But, I was able to find the same tray here on Christian Book Distributors for only $12 – http://www.christianbook.com/magnetic-kidboard-blue/pd/71911
Cute ideas. I LOVE Letter Factory. It is an awesome letter and sound teaching tool. So is starfall.com. I also used Green Light Readers when she showed interest in reading at 4 1/2 (we got them from the Library and my daughter started reading the day she read “The Hat”) and then we went on to Bob Books. Now in kindergarten she is reading level one and two readers and can read whole chapters from the Magic Tree House Series (she is not quite ready for a whole chapter book though). We went on to blends and the silent e and double vowels (can’t think of the tecnical names for it all this morning. Starfally taught her the word families. Now I take care of two 4 year olds and we are about to start the whole process over again. Three and up is such a fun age to teach. They are sponges.
I just have a question this time, hopefully a link up next time! Where did you find the large tweezers? I have been looking for weeks to use them with our kids and can’t find them. Thanks!
They’re toaster tongs from Bed, Bath and Beyond. Bamboo I believe!
Awesome, thanks!
I’ve also seen plastic ones at the dollar store in the party section. They’re ‘marketed’ there for things like sugar cubes, etc. which is why they’re in party supplies.
Hands down Leap Frog Letter Factory is the quickest and easiest way for little ones to learn their sounds and letters! We linked up our Giant Pattern Blocks:Teaching Math with Tots with Movements. Hope your little ones enjoy it as much as ours have!
Link parties are so fun! I am sure you will love hosting 🙂 I hope you will still stop by WOTT and share what Teeny Tot is doing 🙂