Doodles and Such

While we were on vacation, Tabby and I spent some time doodling – in the Oodles of Doodles book to be exact. Doodle Books, in case you’re not familiar with the concept, are quite similar to coloring books but quite a bit more open-ended. Instead of a full picture for you to color, they provide a backdrop or a start to a picture and you fill it in with your own artwork. She is still very much in the learning-to-draw portion of things, but she and I were able to have a very good time filling up a few pages in the book. I plan to take it along again this weekend while we’re camping.

Yes, camping. Again. I am a bit exhausted just thinking about it, but we hadn’t taken Loki out in a while and we had the camper out to have it serviced, so it just made sense to go. No one was available to join us which was kind of a bummer, but also kind of good. It keeps things simpler and will give us time as a family. I’ve been downloading some books to read aloud to the kids and stuff like that.

I also have a few word games I’m planning to take with us. There’s a great site called Playdough to Plato (love that name!) that’s dedicated to fun learn-to-read games. Tabby is well on her way with the reading and can stumble through a lot of the early readers, but she’s been so into the whole thing that I want to help her make more progress. They’re also great because they can be adapted to the level Ben is at, recognizing letters. Most of them also only require some paper or notecards and some markers.

Here they are if you’re interested.

1. Climb to the top – kids roll a dice (made with a cube block and some sticky labels) with sight words or letters on each face and see which one of the six sides gets to the top of the chart first.

2. Same or different – a card is divided down the center with a line and then on each side of the line two letter or number combinations are written. The child then has to decide if they’re the same or different. This helps them to train themselves to visually differentiate between common words that are close to one another.

3. Showdown – you make two sets of cards with the same letters, numbers or words on them, varying in quantity and complexity based on the age of the child. You pick a card from your deck and read it. The child then has a few moments to shuffle through their pile and find the corresponding word/letter/number. Once he’s found it you say “1-2-3 SHOWDOWN!” and you both turn over your cards. If they match … YAY and if not, the child can go through their pile to find the matching one.

I also found this cute math game for addition. We regularly practice addition in the car with Tabby so I think she can handle it. Wonder if I have enough dice.