It has probably been a year since I made this little game. I took an oatmeal can and decorated it to look like a crazy monster. Then I cut out a big mouth and made little circles out of construction paper and wrote the ABC's on them. To play the game the boys take turns feeding the cookies to the hungry monster. I adapt the game to their needs. Sometimes I call a letter and they find it. Sometimes I use flash cards to pick a card, have them identify it, and then find the cookie. Sometimes I let them pick a cookie and tell me what letter it is. My boys like to use thongs to pick them up and feed the monster (so the monster doesn't bite them!), and that is cool cause it is good motor skills practice.
Jet pack especialy likes this game and I'm glad cause we are still working on his letter recognition. Dino has had his letters down for a while now, but if Jet Pack is playing then a lot of times he likes to play too, but he gets bored with it fairly quick, unsurprisingly.
Another learning activity that we like are these counting blocks. We use them for counting and simple math. Some times I make worksheets for the Dino with simple addition and subtraction, and he uses the blocks to help him solve the problems. He also has an addition/subtraction activity on his computer and sometimes he'll use these to do those problems. Sometimes we just wing it. This day we took turns picking out all of the blocks of a certain color and counting them. Then we'd add them together.
We also lined them up and discussed more than, less than, most, least and equal to.
I really like when we are able to do fun and laid back learning activities. Any time when it seems we are getting too stressed, or are too focused on "school" I like to take a day or two to unwind and remember that we actually like learning. Sometimes it is a lot easier to have a set structure for learning, but sometimes we can get too carried away with it.
