The Preschooler’s Busy Book (10 page)

Print each letter in your child’s name on an index card.
Lay them out to spell your child’s name.
Mix them up and have her try to put them back in the proper order.

Paper

Pen, marker, or crayons

Print one letter at the top and center of a sheet of paper.
Below this, write many letters of the alphabet in no particular pattern, spreading them over the sheet of paper.
Have your child circle the letters that match the one printed at the top.
Have her place an “X” over the ones that do not match.
For a variation, use pictures cut from old magazines and have your child identify the pictures that begin with the letter you have written.

When you think about math, you probably think “arithmetic”—the adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing you did when you first started school.
The truth is that mathematics, the subject that incorporates numbers, shapes, patterns, estimation, and measurement, is much broader than that.
Although we may not always realize it, math is everywhere, all around us, present in our world all the time—in the workplace, in our homes, and in life in general.
Math is a very important skill, one we all need in our technological world, as well as in our everyday lives.
Encourage your children to think of themselves as mathematicians who can reason and solve problems.

The good news is that most children enter school with the skills they need to succeed in math.
They are curious about quantities, patterns, and shapes.
In many respects, they are natural problem solvers.
You can help build your child’s math confidence without being an expert yourself.
You can instill an interest in math in your child by doing math together—by asking questions that evoke thinking in terms of numbers and amounts and playing games that deal with such things as logic, reason, estimation, direction, classification, and time.

Teach your child that math is a part of the real world.
Shopping, traveling, gardening, meal planning, cooking, eating, even laundry are all opportunities that allow you to apply math to your daily routine.
Many activities throughout this book deal with cooking, sorting, patterns, and so on.
Use
them, as well as the following activities, as a fun way to help your child develop her math skills.

For additional information on children and math, I recommend
Family Math
, an excellent book packed with fun math activities for the whole family.
The U.S.
Department of Education also puts out a little book called
Helping Your Child Learn Math
.
See
Appendix E
for more information on these and other helpful resources.

Give your child household counting assignments.
Have her count all the doorknobs in the house, or all the cans in the kitchen cupboard, or all the knives, forks, and spoons in the silverware drawer.
You can adapt this game for outside by counting cars as you go for a walk, birds that fly by as you play on the swings, and so on.

This rhyme will help your child’s counting skills.
Try showing her objects in groups of one, two, three, and so on, as you recite the rhyme together.

One, two, buckle my shoe;

Three, four, close the door;

Five, six, pick up sticks;

Seven, eight, lay them straight;

Nine, ten, a big fat hen.

Index cards or small pieces of paper

Pen or marker

Tape

Write the numbers 1 to 10 on index cards or separate sheets of paper.
Tape them on the windows around your house and ask your child to bring you a particular number.
When she has mastered this, have her count objects, such as the number of plates on the table, and bring you the card with the correct number.

Empty egg carton

Pen or marker

Small food items (raisins, cereal, chocolate chips, candies)

Write the numbers 1 to 12 on the individual sections of an egg carton.
Have your child count out each number using small food items.
Then have her fill the numbered section with the correct number of items.
Once the sections are filled, work in reverse, having your child identify each number, count the pieces, then eat them!

Index cards

Pen or marker

Old magazines (optional)

Scissors (optional)

Glue (optional)

Make up two sets of index cards.
On one set write numbers from 1 to 10, or higher.
On the other set, draw (or cut out from magazines) pictures of objects that correspond to the numbers of the first set.
Lay all the cards on the table, face up, and have your child match each numbered card to the card with the corresponding number of objects.

This word game can help develop your child’s shape and color recognition skills.
As you drive or walk along, say “I spy with my little eye something that is orange,” or “… something that is square.” Your child will have fun guessing what it is you see.
Take turns guessing what the other sees.

Calendar

Markers or stickers (optional)

Read the calendar with your child every day.
Include the weekday name, the month name, the date of the month, and the year.
For example, you may say, “Today is Tuesday.
That means yesterday was _______ (Monday), and tomorrow will be _______(Wednesday),” or “Today is the 10th of March.
That means yesterday was the ____(9th), and tomorrow will be the ____(11th).” If possible, allow your child to place a sticker on, or mark off, each day as it is read.

Teach your child this rhyme about the number of days in each month:

Thirty days has September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one,

Save February, which alone,

Has twenty-eight and one day more,

We add to it one year in four.

In these days of digital everything, your child may not see many conventional clocks, but telling time the “old way” is still a skill she should learn.

Colored construction paper

Scissors

Paper plate

Paper fastener

Crayon, pen, or marker

Make a play clock for your child to practice telling time.
Cut big and little hands out of colored construction paper and attach them to a paper plate with a paper fastener.
Using a crayon, pen, or marker, number the clock appropriately.
Your child can move the hands around the clock as she learns the basics of telling time.
(Most young children will not learn all the details of telling time—to the quarter hour, to the minute, and so on—but, if they know their numbers up to twelve, they can certainly learn to tell time on the hour and maybe even on the half hour.)

Construction paper

Glue

Glitter or Colorful Creative Salt (see
Appendix A
)

On construction paper, use glue to draw various shapes: square, rectangle, triangle, heart, circle, oval, star.
Have your child sprinkle glitter (or Colorful Creative Salt) over the shapes.
Shake off the extra glitter and practice the names of each shape.

Colored construction paper

White construction paper

Pen or marker

Scissors

Cut basic shapes (circle, square, rectangle, triangle, heart, and so on) out of colored construction paper.
Trace all the shapes onto a piece of white construction paper.
Have your child match the colored shapes to those drawn on the white paper.

Various household objects

Give your child a group of objects, maybe three or four, that are related in some way: eating utensils, drawing tools, books, fruit, and so on.
Add one item that doesn’t fit with the rest of the objects.
Have your child identify the object that doesn’t belong and tell you why.

Deck of playing cards

Pull one red card and one black card out of a deck of playing cards, and place them on the table or floor.
Give your child a small stack of cards and have her practice sorting them into either the red pile or the black pile.
You can also do this with each of the four suits or with the numbers on the cards.

Geography is the study of the earth, divided into five major themes: location (where it is); place (what makes a place special, both physically and culturally); interaction (between people and the environment); movement (of people, products, and information); and regions (areas defined by distinctive characteristics).
Geography is a way of thinking, asking questions, observing, and appreciating the world around us.

You can help your child develop an interest in geography by providing interesting activities for her, and by prompting her to ask questions about her surroundings.
To help you think geographically, and to help your child build precise mental images, try to use basic geographical terms whenever possible, i.e., west or north, climate, highway, river, and desert.
Expose your child to lots of maps and let her see you use maps regularly.

The following activities are only a few examples of the many ways children learn geography.
They are informal and easy to do, and are designed to help you find ways to include geographic thinking in your child’s early experiences.

Markers

Large sheet of paper

Using markers on a large sheet of paper, draw an imaginary city big enough for your child’s cars and trucks.
Be sure to include some landmarks familiar to your child: bank, grocery store, gas station, park, hospital, school, post office, train tracks, and so on.
Tape the finished city to the floor so your child can travel around the city with her cars, trucks, dolls, and fire engines.
For a more permanent city, use paints on strong cardboard or wood.
Glue milk cartons or small boxes onto the map to make buildings.
For a variation, make an imaginary airport or farm.