Big Energy-Little Learners...Can I do it all?

Another alphabet activity that really tests how well your preschooler knows the alphabet.  Also a good building block for all those ABC order lessons that will come up in the coming years in school.  This is another activity I have not spent much time doing.  I usually focus on one letter at a time.  Singing the alphabet while looking at the letters weekly is what I think helped Little Dragon complete this activity.  For this activity I randomly wrote letters on the board and blank spaces.  I left more spaces blank then filled in, I had high expectations for Little Dragon.  Doll Dragon needed something to do as well so I had her come up with, and spell, a five or more lettered word starting with the blank space letters that Little Dragon was filling in.  This worked out great!  Both of them exercising their brains to succeed this challenge. Doll Dragon tried a couple 4 letter words but quickly noticed the letter count was not enough and thought of a new word.  Both Drago

Recognizing uppercase/lowercase letters that belong together is important.  It is a key   oint in reading.  I have a few activities for this specific type of letter recognition but I don't do it often enough.   Little Dragon recently received a flyer from his out of home preschool showing what he needs to know for Kindergarten and capital/lowercase was listed.  I knew I hadn't worked on this often so I made sure to implement it in this weeks lessons.  This week was Easter week so we did the letter matching using plastic eggs.  They are there and I was trying to find as many ways to use them as possible. I also didn't have to dig through my past preschool things to find other matching activities.  This was right in front of me.  We grabbed the egg bin and I wrote the alphabet on the white board. Doll Dragon joined in this activity so I wanted to make it a tad more challenging and figured Little Dragon would be able to keep up with her (knowing she would

To give a different spin on stacking games we played this version which used dice.  We stacked eggs on the same stack using the dice to determine how many pieces we would stack on our turn.  When the stack fell it ended the game.  Having to stac k three or more pieces in a row was nerve racking and made it seem like your turn was  never going to end! The pressure was on trying to keep the stack from falling on your turn from one of the many pieces you have to stack on.  We played this game multiple times my dragons love to play games with dice. 

We did this game with our egg unit which you can see here  This is a fun game of competition that quickly gets everybody fired up and ready to win.  Rules: Everyone sits by the bin so it is easily accessible  Set a timer for 1 minute Each player stacks as many egg pieces as they can  When the timer goes off the person with the tallest stack or most egg pieces in a stack wins  That's all! 

This was the first game we played for our Easter theme which you can see here Materials:   plastic eggs 4 plastic cups masking tape Rules:   tape the four cups together.  I put number stickers inside the cups for point value place tape on the floor for a starting line place the cups desired distance from the starting line Each dragon had 3 tries to get an egg into a cup.  They had to stand behind the line and toss the egg into a cup winner is the person with the most points.  We did not play for x amount of rounds or time, we played until the dragons were finished playing.  Little Dragon and Summer Dragon were fairly good at this game.  All 3 dragons impressed me with their math skills.  Adding 3 and 4 points to their current score was very easy for them.  I thought they would use their fingers for counting but they would collect their eggs and give me their new score with out missing a beat.   They didn't even realize they were exercising their brains!

The first time around all I had to worry about was me. Making sure I was healthy and comfortable. Nobody had expectations of me.  Nobody was counting on me. This time the pregnancy adds a little chaos to the mix.  It effects the whole family.  If I am not comfortable it isn't so easy to just sit down for a couple hours until the baby moves or contractions finally stop.  I have two other kids to take care of and of course during the times they need me to take care of them is when I get uncomfortable. That's when contractions start.  The beginning was the hardest. Just about everything but bread made me sick.  This made feeding the family especially hard. We lived off frozen cheese pizza and frozen bean burritos for months.  The first time I was able to make a hot fresh meal the table was quiet because everyone was busy scarfing their first good meal in awhile.  I am blessed to have a husband who did make some meals while I was sick and never complain

This is a fun game to play with multiple people! We played this game during our Easter theme week.  You can see our other activities here . We played this game a few times because the dragons loved it!   Rules:  Have 1 person pick an egg piece and place it on the ground then continue around the circle giving everyone a chance to lay down an egg piece.  Continue taking turns adding a piece at a time to your stack. You may only use 1 hand to stack a piece. If your stack falls you are out.  Continue going around until there is 1 stack left, that person is the winner.  Taking turns placing egg pieces made the anticipation grow and grow.   Doll Dragon was bouncing waiting for her turn and Little Dragon was watching closely to e ach person place their egg hoping their stack would fall.  Testing if it will stay.... CRASH! Little Dragons stack falls It was a quick game that can also be used for multiple ages. You could also take turns stacking