ABC and 123: A Learning Collaborative

Monday, April 19, 2010

Read With Friends and Family: Readeo

Welcome to ABC and 123!

Numerous families today live miles and miles from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and as families grow and there are more little ones to care for, it becomes increasingly difficult to stay in touch between visits. Sometimes I wish more than anything that 3 1/2 hours didn't separate my parents from my family here in the DC Metro area. Although I know that some families have a much greater distance between loved ones, I can't help but dream.

So when I was asked to take a look at a new literacy-related product designed to let families to "See, Hear, and Read with each other, even when you're far away" you can imagine that I jumped--leaped!--at the opportunity.

Here's the skinny on this wonder product, Readeo:

Readeo: Combine "the best children's books" on the market and a state-of-the-art video conference call, and you have Readeo. Really. Readeo allows friends and family to connect via the computer and read a book together. It's incredible, and we love it.

Maddy, Owen, and Cora have had an absolute blast reading new books with their aunts and uncles for the last few days. Whether it was the early morning or right before bedtime, it has been a riot for them to be pajama-clad here in Maryland yet still be able to share books with their cooler-than cool uncles and aunts back in Pennsylvania. I'm really looking forward to getting my parents (who just need a little more technical support than most) set up when we see them for Mother's Day; I'm betting that reading with Nanny and Pap will take the cake as far as my kids are concerned!

Watch this quick video to see how Readeo works:

How Readeo Works from Readeo on Vimeo.

Although the set-up took some time and energy for both me and one of my sisters, it was well worth it. Logging in and getting her webcam to work was extremely easy for my other sister, so it really depends on the quality of your computer equipment and your familiarity with it to determine the ease with which you can get Readeo up and rolling. I used my EeePC notebook because it has a built-in webcam, and because of the size of the screen, I did have to play with my screen resolution settings in order to better view the book and videos below.

One of the great parts of this product is that even if you're not in a "BookChat" with one of your Readeo "friends", your kiddos can still "Read Solo" by choosing any one of the numerous books from Readeo's Library. And because the folks at Readeo have partnered with solid publishers like Simon & Schuster, Chronicle Books, Candlewick Press, and blue apple books, the book choices are awesome. We are a book-focused family, bibliophiles, lovers of all books, but the dozen books we read both solo and in BookChat were all new to us. Seriously, we were in heaven.

The graphics of texts are fantastic, and the pages look like they're turning naturally. All three of my children enjoyed adding books to their "bookshelves" so that we could easily return to their favorites.

CEO Coby Neuenschwander founded Readeo in 2009 in an attempt to establish a more meaningful relationship between his parents and his young son. Because the miles between them a

lowed for only a few visits a year, forging a strong relationship between grandparents and grandson was difficult. What better way of carving out meaningful time together, long-distance, than reading a high-quality children's book and being able to see each other as the book is read?

Ready to try it for yourself? The kind folks at Readeo have offered ABC & 123 readers a free one-month trial of this product by entering the code "goreadeo" at checkout. Try it--I'm betting your family will totally dig it.

And because April is the "Month of the Military Child," Readeo is offering military families a free six-month trial of their product. Learn more on Readeo's website, their blog, or follow them on Twitter!

Happy Readeo-reading, and thank you, thank you to Readeo for offering a free three-month subscription of Readeo to my family in exchange for a review of their product to be shared here at ABC & 123. My opinion was in no way influenced by the kind folks at Readeo; it is mine and mine alone, influenced only by my 6, 4, and 3 year-old.

Posted by Amy, of teach mama & we teach

Friday, April 16, 2010

Spring is Here

Welcome! New to ABC and 123?
Please check out our FAQ in the left sidebar.

The trees are blooming and the daffodils are pushing up through the ground, here in Michigan. Spring has arrived and we've got LOTS of great activities and projects to share with you!

If you are still working on yours, don't fret! If we get enough submissions we'll do another round up of ideas so keep sending them in. We're also looking for planting and green crafts to feature for Earth Day, we love seeing all the ways you turn recycleables into neat stuff!

Spring Weather & Rainbows:

Little Page Turners made this pretty windmills, perfect for a windy day, like the one in the book by Frank Asch that inspired them.

Mandarin Home Schoolers shared the lessons that welcomed spring in their home, including this Q-tip rainbow. There are also book suggestions, as well as links to the readers and the rainbow math sheet they used. We also liked how they made a chart comparing winter and spring.

There are several great spring themed projects over at Getting Messy with Ms. Jessi! We especially like their group rainbow. You'll definitly want to stop by and see their creative play with flower, rabbit, and red robin crafts too.

Spring Creatures:

This red robin project is made by recycling your cereal boxes. Leah from Almost Unschoolers also shares a book you can use in conjunction with this craft. To continue on with your learning theme, you could also make the delicious looking cream cheese filled phyllo dough robins' nests.

We love these cute Monarch butterflies Ticia at Adventures in Mommydom created out of file folders and tissue paper. While you're there, why don't you also check out the pictures of her kids frolicing in the fields of bluebonnets, beautiful!

Amanda at Fun Handprint Art made these footprint butterflies as part of their March calendar page but notes that it would be a fun spring project even without the calendar.

Mandarin Home Schoolers also did a unit focused on the classic children's book, The Very Hungry Caterpiller. We liked several of the things they did like alphabetizing the words for the foods the caterpillar ate, practicing handwriting with fill in the blank portions of the text, and making flower tops for their cups during snack...too cute! Our favorites were the posters for each stage of the Blue Morpho butterfly life cycle.

Little Page Turners also these adorable bug houses, only it looks like a little fairy may have moved in too!

They also made these little rock frogs, so cute and fun, also a book related craft.

If you don't have any rocks on hand, try these paper plate ones, from A Mommy's Adventures. Can you guess what the eyes are made of?

Spring Flowers:

The Pink and Green Mama has written an article for Babble about printmaking with kids using recycled objects you have around the home.

Our feature writer Erica from Confessions of a Homeschooler, recently made salad spinner flowers.

Maureen at Spell Outloud did this adorable foam flower craft based on the popular book Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert.

Dont' forget to send us your green crafts, like these pop out flowers found on No Time for Flash Cards, we love this creative way to reuse toilet paper rolls.

Nature:

Color flowers with Teach Mama and then

Head outdoors and do their easy and exciting backyard fragrance experiment.

Snack Time:

After looking at all those projects, are you hungry yet?

Here are Pati's, from A Crafty Escape, spring cookies. A special treat for snack time☺ We also like her scrappy solution and green idea, for using up all those free promotional magnets you get in the mail. Another option would be to have your kids create small works of art work and use those to cover them.

But if you're looking for something a little healthier, how about the edible insects at Little Page Turners? Pretty stinkin' cute, huh? If you noticed that Christianne is in this post several times, it's because she's awesome! If you haven't been over there yet, what are you waiting for? You won't regret it!

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Under Construction

Please pardon our dust!

Over the next several hours we will be working on changing our blog layout.
The links and sidebar widgets may not be working on your visit and we apologize. We hope to have it all running smoothly by tomorrow morning.

Thanks,
Katie & Katie

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Teaching Children to Count by 2, 5 and 10

Skip Counting, such as counting by 2s, 5s and 10s, is useful in showing the patterns between numbers. Some count-bys are more useful than others. Counting by 5s has application to money and time-telling. Being able to memorize and fluently recite count-bys is beneficial for eventual success with multiplication (forward counting) and division (backward counting).

Squidoo has an excellent resource with stories, songs, games and more for many different count bys.

Count by 2's
Julie from The Adventures of Bear used a dot painter and a number chart to begin teaching the concept of skip counting to her little one.

This idea is creative, Julie and her little learners used shoes to practice counting by 2s.

Raising Memories has put together a number wheel that would work well for teaching skip counting and odd/even numbers.

Count by 5's
This page from Mama Jenn's calendar notebook uses tally marks to practice counting by fives.

Quirky Momma shared a fun video link with a song about counting 5's.

Count by 10's
Using pony beads and pipe cleaners The Adventures of Bear practiced grouping and counting 10s.

Bunches of Buttons was the spring board for this count by 10s activity.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Show and Tell #3

Welcome to another week of Show and Tell!

We wanted to kick off this week's party by sharing with you a stunning Earth Day learning resource.

This week only, April 12-16, BBC Earth is offering a free iTunes download of the first episode in the 11-part series, "Pole to Pole." The download is available in SD or HD format. If you’re not already familiar – Planet Earth is an 11-part series presenting the story of life on Earth. The series has been four years in production, over 2000 days in the field, using 71 cameramen and filming across 204 locations in 62 countries. This is described as the ultimate portrait of our planet. The download is a definite educational must-see for children as they gear up for Earth Day adventures! (Note: download available to US residents only)

Now on to some of the fabulous things our readers are doing! Here are three of our show and tell links, chosen at random, from last week's link party.

Tons of Fun Activities shared a selection of handprint card ideas for every season!

Delicious Ambiquity linked up with a post full of egg-cellent ideas for using the leftover plastic Easter eggs for learning activities.

Fryman Four shared a post featuring some great April Fools tricks that you will certainly want to check out and bookmark for next year's holiday!

We can't wait to see what you've all got to share this time!

Please remember these rules:

Post an "Ah Ha Moment," favorite lesson, experiment, learning game, field trip, whatever you're currently working on, or your child's fridge worthy artwork, handmade gifts or anything holiday related.
Direct link to your post, not your home page.
Include a link back to us or our link button in your post.

If you come back and your link is missing, double check to make sure you've followed the directions!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Play To Learn: Fine Motor Fun Part 1

Welcome to our First Play To Learn post! Today we’ll be talking about how to incorporate Fine Motor Skills into learning, and best of all it will be easy and fun! So without any further ado, here are some ideas to help you change a hum drum routine into fabulous fun and work those fine motor skills at the same time!

Biggie Beads by Fun Fusion!

We have the original Perler Beads, but this is a new variation for smaller children who can’t quite manipulate the tiny ones. You can iron your finished design just like the regular ones, and they are perfect to use as counters, color sorting, and patterns! They’re just the right size for my 4 year old, and great for fine-muscle practice! I also had her try this using tweezers to grab the beads.

Toot and Otto:

An new take on the “Connect Four” game! There are several ways to play.

Each person gets a letter and whoever gets 4 of their tiles in a row wins!
Drop all the tiles in and see how many ‘TOOT’s” and how many “OTTO’s” you can find.
Play alone, making a pattern with the tiles!

This game is a blessing in disguise as it works patterning skills, reading & phonic skills, all the while working on fine motor coordination skills as it takes a steady hand to get the small tiles into the slits along the top.

Marble balancing:

This is one of our favorite activities to work on fine motor coordination. I chose to do it in the workbox because otherwise we’d have marbles rolling all over! Using a piece of Styrofoam, simply push golf tees into the foam, then balance different sized marbles on the tops!

Here’s another variation of the above game. I found these wooden games in the dollar section at Michaels! (I think they were actually $5 though). They are come in several shapes, and she had fun putting all the tees in the holes, then we balanced pom-poms on the tops. The good news about these, is you can use them as logic puzzles for your older kids!

Sticker Fun!

We use any tracing worksheets we can find and place tiny stickers along the edges. You can read more and download worksheets here.

Scissor Skills:

This is a great way to work fine motor skills and kids LOVE to cut! I have cutting worksheets on my blog for each letter, but we started off with plain strips of construction paper. I drew lines on the strips with a sharpie and she cut along the lines. Check out more scissor tips and ideas in this ABC and 123 Scissor Post!

Number Dot Cards:

These counting cards are a great way to practice counting while at the same time working fine motor skills! Simply use a fun manipulative like mini-clothespins or some tweezers with pom-poms and place the correct number on each card. You can also use dry-erase marker to trace the numbers, or put little stickers on each dot. If you laminate the cards, the stickers should come off fairly easily making them re-usable!

Chopsticks and Pom-Poms

I found these kids chopsticks at PF Chang’s restaurant. The waiter was kind enough to give me new sets to take home! They’re great for transferring activities. I had her use them to sort these pom-poms by size, but you could use them with just about any manipulative you have. Variation: If you don’t have these handy chopsticks, use tweezers!

Letter bead lacing:

I found these letters at Lakeshore Learning but you can also just get any kind of beads from a local craft store. This is a great way to work on fine muscle control as you lace each small item onto the string. I typically use this to practice our letters, so I’ll give her a letter to find and string on so that we can make a word. After looking at the word she’ll finish lacing as many as she can fit on her string.

Those are just some of the ideas for fine motor skill fun! Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of our Fine motor Fun post with more great ideas!

If you have more ideas to share, or would like to be included in future “Play To Learn” posts, please email me at homeschoolerconfessions {at} gmail {dot} com, we’d love to hear from you!

Friday, April 9, 2010

Alphabet: The Letter U

If U are looking for some unusual letter U activities, U have come to the right place!

Jackie for Pocketful of Posies submitted a link with several letter U ideas. She has put together a U themed file folder and offered the downloads on her site. She also used the book The Ugly Duckling to support the theme. Cute!

Brandy has a great round up of U activities. I especially love her idea to make upside down cake! She shares the recipes, as well as her other unique ideas, on Adventures of a Flake.

Mama Jenn put together a great file folder game called Up, Up, and Away. You can check it out here. She shares instructions for three different learning games using the game board.