Number games for Benny

In the interest of expanding Benny's preschool number games beyond our current frog game, here are some new ideas I came up with or found online.

1. Dot to dot puzzles
http://www.kidsrcrafty.com/dot-to-dot.htm
This site has alphabet dot to dots for both uppercase and lowercase numbers and number ones starting as low as 1-3.

http://www.myfreecolouringpages.com/dot_to_dot.htm
Number dot to dots ranging from 1-6 up to 1-19

http://www.kidzone.ws/math/ocean/dotsby1.htm
http://www.kidzone.ws/math/farm/dotsby1.htm
A couple of 1-9 dot to dots here.

2. Feed the dog a bone
from Evan Moor Math Games and Centers

Basically, you make dog bowls and bones from paper, write numbers on the bowls, and then stick the appropriate number of bones in each bowl. Benny has two stuffed dogs that we can use to "eat" the bones.

3. Feed the hungry crocodile
We have a crocodile puppet that Benny loves. Variation one is to write numbers on card stock fish and have Benny feed the numbers to the crocodile in order. Variation two is to hold up a card with a number on it and have Benny feed the correct number of fish. I think we also have a gorilla puppet that we could feed bananas for even more variety.

4. Hide and Seek Frogs
Basically this will be our current frog/fly matching game, but with the twist that he has to search for the frogs which I'll hide around the room and then bring them to the lily pad with the correct number of flies.

5. Sidewalk numbers
Since our letter games have outgrown the size of our sidewalk, I thought we'd try some number games instead. After writing the numbers on the sidewalk, we can take turns running, hopping, spinning, etc. to the number that is called out. We could step on each number and do something (clap our hands, stomp our feet, bark like a dog, etc.) the number of times listed on the sidewalk.

6. Counting with our fingers
Based on Benny's discovery that he can count to five by changing the number of fingers he hold up, we'll continue doing that through 10. (He thought it was hilarious that you needed two hands to make the number 6 this week.)

7. Make a number sticker book
We could make him a little book one week with the numbers 1-10 and let him put the correct number of stickers on each page.

That should keep us busy for a while. Vacation is definitely good for the brain.

Experimenting with Preschool (the alphabet)

The only letter that I can say with certainty that Benny knows is the B. With Aa, b, Cc, or Dd, I get an I don't know when I ask what letter is this and only about a 50% accuracy rate if I try the show me the letter whatever route. Now, I don't know for Benny can either mean he really doesn't know or it can just mean he's not sure enough that he's right to be willing to give me an answer. So for this week, I decided to change things up a bit and try a new approach.

Knowing that Benny loves to be outside, we moved our alphabet review outside for the week. On Monday, I drew each letter A to d on a separate square of our sidewalk. While I was drawing, I asked Benny to walked on the letter lines. Once all of the letters were drawn, we went back to the beginning and hopped our way through the letters, stopping to name each letter on the way. Then we turned sideways and stepped our way back to the beginning again naming all of the letters.

Next came letter tag. I called a letter. Benny went to tag it. If he tagged the wrong letter, I simply told him what letter he had tagged, repeated what he was looking for with the addition clue of its color. Then came Benny's favorite part. He got to call the letter, and I tagged it. Sometimes he would simply point to a letter and say that one if he didn't know the name. I usually just answered, "Do you mean the ______?" Then we ended by walking down the letters again and looking at each one. I told him the name of the letter and tried to describe each letter's shape to him. For instance, the small a was a circle with a tail, and the B was a straight line with two big bumps. Will this help him learn these letters? I'll have to get back to you on that one. What I do know is that he is having fun.

A few ideas we haven't tried yet. Tomorrow we can sweep off each letter and say its name. (DH mowed this morning.) I thought we could play freeze with Benny running up and down the sidewalk until I call freeze and then telling me what letter he's on. We might try letting Benny trace the letters in chalk. Other than that, we're going to try adding an alphabet book to our stack each day. Any other ideas??

Revising Benny's Preschool

While the basic set up of the letter of the week preparatory program is
working well for us, I have decided to make a few changes. First, I'm
expanding the program from 26 weeks to 32 weeks so that next spring we
won't run out of things to do while Jessie and Violet are still doing a
full schedule. Second, I believe it to be wise to add some review weeks
at various intervals so that Benny isn't overloaded with information and frustrated. Third, I've deleted a few shapes and colors(parallelogram, octagon, tan, and lavender), added in a few of my own instead, and rearranged when each is introduced a bit to cover basic shapes and colors first. Scroll down to see our revised schedule starting with week 5:

WEEK	THEME	SHAPE/COLOR	LETTER	NUMBER
5	Lighthouses	Circle	Review	5
6	Rainbows	Red	Ee	Review
7	Stars	Review	Ff	6
8	Sun	Star	Gg	7
9	Cookies	Yellow	Hh	8
10	Trains	Rectangle	Review	9
11	Moon	Purple	Ii	10
12	Ducks	Oval	Jj	Review
13	Cars, Trucks	Orange	Kk	11
14	Thanksgiving	Review	Ll	12
15	Horses	Triangle	Review	13
16	Rain	Black	Mm	14
17	Christmas	Crescent	Nn	15
18	Christmas	White	Oo	Review
19	Butterflies	Pentagon	Pp	16
20	Sheep	Brown	Review	17
21	Ears	Review	Qq	18
22	Boats	Heart	Rr	19
23	Balloons	Pink	Ss	20
24	Wind	Hexagon	Tt	Review
25	Seasons	Gray	Review	21
26	Snow	Sphere	Uu	22
27	Dogs	Gold	Vv	23
28	Rabbits	Review	Ww	24
29	Airplanes	Cone	Review	25
30	Dragons	Silver	Xx	Review
31	Gardens	Pyramid	Yy	Penny, Nickel
32	Fish	Review	Zz	Dime, Quarter

Benny's Preschool Time

I have never run an actual "preschool" type program before this year. I think Jessie and Violet had both by ages 3 1/2 learned their letters, numbers, shapes, and colors just by reading books with me. Benny, however, prefers books that tell a story over alphabet, counting, shape, or color books. We used M&Ms to teach him several colors, and he has listened to sisters count enough that he can count fairly well (at least when no one is listening). So as I thought about some goals for him, I realized we needed to work on some basic preschool stuff this year.

Not having time to put together my own program, I went looking on the web and found Letter of the Week. Their preparatory program became the basis of our preschool time. It has only required a few changes and additions on my part.

For teaching letters, they suggest a letter coloring page, posting the letters on the wall, and tracing the letters in something like pudding, finger paint, or rice. Benny doesn't really like to color or hates getting his hands dirty in food or paint. We also don't have wall space for letters. I also wanted him to learn both the capital and lowercase letters. Instead of the wall, we put letter magnets up on the refrigerator each week. Since Benny likes puzzles, I thought that some way to match the capital letter to the lowercase letter might work well. I found an egg matching game at on the internet that I printed on card stock and cut out. (It doesn't seem to be available anymore, so I'll try to put my file up and link to it later this week.) We also start each time singing the alphabet song. Benny always wants to skip the song and just read but has resigned himself to sit and listen to mom sing (except for one day last week when he VERY quietly sang along parts of it).

For teaching numbers, I have a game I made last year from an Evan-Moor book I believe. It has 10 frogs with the numbers 1-10 and 10 lily pads with 1-10 flies on them. The first day Benny wanted to do more frogs than just the 1 and 2 so I put out the pieces up to 5. All I had to do was tell him what the number was for 3, 4, and 5, and he knew right away which lily pad it belonged on.


We also have and use whenever Benny is interested a few Kumon books. The titles are Let's Color!, Let's Cut!, and Let's Sticker & Paste! Benny loves the latter 2 and thinks the coloring book is just OK. It is the only coloring book he will actually use though. I find the books to be cute, colorful, easy to use, and thankfully not very expensive. These books say for ages 2 and up. I might try some of the books for the 3-5 age in the spring. Here are a couple of his cutting pages from our first week of preschool.