Materials
- plain vinyl placemats
- permanent markers
- stencils and/or cookie cutters of letters and shapes
- playdough
What to do
1. Trace stencils or cookie cutters on plain placemats to create desired designs. For example, use letter stencils to make the children's names or use holiday themed cookie cutters.
2. Invite the children to make shapes out of playdough using their hands or cookie cutters, and match the shapes to the ones on their placemat.
3. This is a good activity for matching, one-to-one correspondence, pre-reading, and sequencing.
-Jeanette Denning, Tinley Park, IL
Instructions
1. Ask for donations of empty film canisters from a film-processing store.
Collect objects that make different sounds, such as pebbles, nails, cotton,
corks, shells, sand, paper clips, water, dry cereal, nuts and bolts, jingle bells,
raisins, keys, rice, and so on.
2. Fill two canisters with each object, making sets of two per sound. You also
can use the same materials of different sizes or amounts. Seal the tops with
glue or tape. Place the canisters in a shoebox for storage.
3. Print the names of each object on separate index cards. Glue a sample of the
object on each card. Place the completed cards in another shoebox for
storage.
4. Encourage the children to shake the canisters and match the sounds. Start
with only a few canisters.
5. After the children have explored for a while, mix up the canisters and
introduce the identification cards. Encourage the children to shake the
canisters and identify the sounds by placing them on the cards.
6. Increase the number of canisters in each shoebox, as the children get better
at identifying them.
7. By placing the same objects with varying sizes or amounts in one box (such
as pebbles in different sizes), children's hearing acuity will improve.
More to do Games: Two children can play a version of the card game "Go Fish!" using the
canisters.
