Building a Word-a-Pillar

Word Caterpillars are not new; I have seen them all over the internet as a fun alternative to a basic word wall.  I had intended making one for my kids as soon as we started learning Sight Words, but that didn't happen. Then again when I found some new sight word work to try. Still didn't happen.  Now we have done a few weeks worth of these new worksheets, and I finally started! I guess it seemed like too daunting of a task! 

Luckily my procrastination led to a fun result.  We had so many words to start our caterpillar with that we were able to play a little game to do it! I made and laminated all the current words then laid them in a pile face down on the floor.  The girls took turns drawing words. If they could read the word they drew they got to hang in on the caterpillar! This was VERY exciting to the girls! I guess there is something special about getting to tape something to the wall (or door frame in this case).

We kept going until most of the words were up.  They got stuck on the word "here," so I got to hang it up! 

Now it is easy to review words, plus since the circles are laminated we can take them now at any time to play a new game of Build a Word-a-Pillar!

Want to make your own Word-a-Pillar? Here is the PDF version of mine (so far); I will add files as I get them made!

Word-a-Pillar
Word-a-Pillar 2
Word-a-Pillar 3
Number Words Zero-Twenty

Cariboo Re-Do for Blending Words

When the girls were younger they really enjoyed the game Cariboo.

If you have never seen it, it is a cute game to practice colors, shapes, numbers, and letters while finding balls to unlock treasure.  They loved it when they were 2 and 3 but have since outgrown it.  Not only had they outgrown it, Bria had eaten corners off a few of the pieces making it unusable.  It has set around here for a while waiting, and I finally got around to repairing it. I didn't repair it in the same way though.  Instead I increased the difficulty to a level they are at.  I wanted to use the originally alphabet cards, so I decided the easiest way to repair it would be to make new cards with common word endings.  Just some card stock and a marker, and we have a new game!

Then they could draw a card, select an ending, and blend them into a word. Didn't matter if it was a real word or not as long as they were able to blend it into a word.  Basically I just want them to work on sounding out words.  It worked! They had a great time making all sorts of silly words!

You could do the so much with it.  Cards for addition or subtraction, matching sight words, matching words to pictures, and probably many more!  I may end up making more versions too!

Hide the Baby (Moses) and Paper Baskets

Our Bible story this week was about Miriam and baby Moses.  The girls are familiar with the story of Moses in the basket (for a while there they would call any baby they saw in any sort of basket-like thing Moses).  Normally this story puts an emphasis on Moses and how god was able to protect him. Obviously an important point, but I wanted the girls to think a bit about Miriam and how she might have felt....annoyed, scared, worried, frustrated. We don't really know, but some of those are things the girls feel when dealing with Eli!

So after reading and discussing the story we played a little game called hide the baby.  First we tried using our Sock Monkey Game.

Basically one of the girls hid the baby, and we each chose a card to try and figure out what room the baby was in.

The cards say things like "in a room with a lamp" or "in a room with a desk."  Whoever hid the baby says yes or no, and you can put the card in the appropriate pile for reference later.  Some of the cards say "go look!" Whoever gets one of these gets to get up and look in the room of their choice until the timer runs out (I think it is a one minute timer).

 When the girls hid the baby, it was really pretty easy to find. When I hid the baby they had a hard time. We went through all the cards, and they still couldn't find it! They narrowed it down to the correct room though.  We went to the room and played the hot and cold game until they found it. So you could probably do the entire game using hot and cold if you wanted to.

After the girls got tired of the game we decided to try and make some paper heart baskets.  So we started with 2 sheets of construction paper and folded it in half.

Then we cut that in half to make long pieces of paper.

2 halves of the paper.  You can imagine they would be long rectangles.

Take one of each color and lay the in the shape of a heart with the folded side at the point of the heart (otherwise it won't make a basket).

I drew a pencil line across the pink where it met the purple, so I knew how far I could cut.

Lay both your rectangles together and cut strips starting at the folded side and going up to your line.  You can draw the lines on before you cut, so they are easy.  I did not do it, and we had some problems later.  Maybe even lines would have helped some. You can round the top now or once it is finished!

Now for the weaving part, because the strip is folded you will have to weave around and through the other strips.  The point is to make a basket, so the inside needs to be hollow.  It is confusing for me to read, but when you start looking at it in your hands it makes sense.  The fold creates two sides, so the other piece must go through the center.  I promise it will make sense when you try it!

Somehow we had two edge strips that would not fit! I have no idea how, was it because I didn't exactly measure my strips? I don't know, but I decided to cut them off.  With the girls baskets I waited until this point and had them cut the extra strip off while rounding off the top section.

You can see it makes a basket!

This was actually frustrating for the girls because they kept getting stuck on how to weave each piece. So I made them little flat hearts they could weave easier.  Same idea, but it is flat, so you just weave over and under. I glued the top of the hearts to the paper to keep everything together.

They were pretty proud when they finished their flat hearts! And Bria even stuck one of her tiny babies in her heart basket!

Turkey Hunt

I saw the idea for a turkey hunt on Frugal Fun for Boys, and while my boy isn't big enough to shoot a Nerf gun, my girls are, and they love them! Instead of pop up turkeys I went for standing turkeys that would fall down when hit.  I thought the extra drama would excite the girls even if it did mean picking up turkeys between each round.

I started with a Gerber Puffs container and scrapbook paper.  (I have saved these containers for so long; I was happy to finally find a use for some!)

I cut out a turkey body that would fit the Puffs containers and a whole bunch of colored feathers.  I used hot glue to glue it all together and add paper noses, wattles, and googly eyes.

 After I had all my turkeys made; I hot glued them to the containers.  Ta-da! Cute little turkeys to shoot.  Although Eli tried to call them ducks; they do look like turkeys, right???

At our first Thanksgiving we tried it outside.  The wind made it a little hard because the turkeys wanted to blow over.  Once we found a less windy spot the girls had fun shooting them over and over.  Eli preferred to steal them and hug them.

My kids didn't want to shoot as much at the next Thanksgiving (Yes we had two), but my nieces sure did! O wasn't strong enough to cock the Nerf gun, so she ran over them with the lawn mower instead.

 My kids preferred sliding up and down the hall this time.

We didn't play with any real rules, but I am sure you could see who could hit the most or the furthest or even play a game a HORSE like you would in basketball taking turns at different locations.  Ours were just excited to knock them over!