Count, Rhyme, Repeat with Free e-books

Or rhyme, count, read, repeat!!

One of Spider-man's current favorite is "Ten Little Ladybugs".

And recently, he has been reading "Ten Rubber Duckies" a lot as well!

They are really are a lot of fun, with tactile critters, magical countdowns, and rhymes all thrown into the learning mix...

Batman, inspired by the books, decided to come up with his own. Of course, he chose to do count-ups, and skip count.
This is all his effort, I only added the clip arts! Amazing how a good book can inspire us :) And what a great way to get ready for KG over the summer. Some of his rhymes are here as images. He started from 1, skip counted by 2, and stopped at 11. Simple. For this one, he decided to rhyme with the number. Start with 1, add 2, you get 3. So what rhymes with 3 that makes sense in the context of monkeys, forest etc, and off he went...

With its predictable ending, and repetitions, this makes a great simple reader.

Feel free to download the book here - Skip Count Up and Rhyme with Monkeys . 

Come up with your own rhymes and combinations. Count up, down, or skip count.
Spiderman soon joined us, and in collaboration, we came up with three more books, which were a hoot. All three are available  for free download as well - just click on the images.

Batman wants to share these with all his friends. I would appreciate if you 'like' us on FB, or follow our tweets, or subscribe to more of our fun ideas, or do them all - so the sharing circle is complete!

Take a peek at our other combinations...


Count up with spotted cows..

Count down with buzzing bees...

Skip count down with little fishies...

 

I would love to see if you have done something similar. Please leave me a comment. Have fun with rhymes!

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Things That Go Together Printables

Spiderman loves our collection of miniatures. See this post for his comments and observations about pre-reading fun with matching objects.

I decided to mix it up a bit, and created some "mostly" new cards for more matching fun...

This is a great problem solving and matching game. It encourages your pint sized learners to develop critical sorting, categorization, thinking skills, all the while extending their vocabulary. 
And all this when they are having fun!

I made  26 pairs of cards on a boatload of topics. So it is guaranteed to keep them engaged. 
This set is Batman's and Spiderman's fave.

 This next set gave them both a moment of pause! I could hear the gears turning :)

 The set is free, and available for download at my TpT store here.A big shout out to the wonderful graphics at My Cute Graphics! I adore them. They are cute and free!

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Pink and Pirates at TpT Store

No, it's not about pink pirates this time!

But I did put some fun stuff on the TpT store, and I hope you will find it useful and have some fun with it!

I started with the Montessori Pink Series for Language Arts (start at the beginning, right?).

One is free preview of the series with a little bit of everything....

....and the other one is  focused specifically on the Pink Series Rhyming Fun, with 30 cards, 4 worksheets, and rhyming chutes and ladders game with just words from the pink series...
My two super-heroes love this twist on the fun classics game.

If anyone is just starting with the Pink Series, and would like to see something specific, I am open to suggestions! Another file with just the Pink Series Cards will be up shortly, followed my more worksheets.
The ambitious idea is add more on the Pink, followed by Blue and Green, but I get ahead of myself, lol :)

I also added some ten frames, pirate style, from 1, all the way up to 20...

It has a fun ten frames game - along with the ten frame you get, you need to pick the corresponding treasure chest with the right number on it, so you can get to 10. In this case, a pirate picked up a 9, and needs the chest with 1 on it!

 

The file also has addition cards to reinforce the learning with the ten frames, and tons of cliparts for the pirates to fill up their frames with. It also provides some excellent fine motor skill if they cut the pix themselves!! 

That's all for now, although I am working on adding more fun stuff.

So if you have are interested, head on over to the TpT store, and give me some feedback please! 

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Laundry Lessons

Not to air our dirty laundry, but what can we possibly learn from this? 

A lot of moments can be teachable moments, but even knowing that, I was a bit taken aback at just how many things we did learn (yes, I learned a few as well) while doing something as simple as laundry!

First we sorted the kid's clothes, but of course, the lesson starts before that. The kids are required to put their clothes in the hamper. If they don't, their clothes don't get washed, and soon, we don't have our favorite angry birds t-shirts for school! But I digress.

• We sorted the clothes into mostly white (& cotton), mostly cotton that need a bit more vigorous washing, and mostly not (the ones that require gentle washing)! We fastened buttons, snaps, zippers etc, and turned clothes with prints on them inside out. Lots of fine motor fun.
• We also sorted the clothes to make sure that we had a whole set, like both socks in a pair, tops and bottoms of pajamas etc.
• The sorting into 3 piles prompted a discussion about the different settings on the washer, hot water cleaning more dirt, but also being tough on the clothes etc. And of course, energy. Hot water needs more energy, as the water needs to be heated up. Batman looked at the whites, which were not very dirty, and at all the settings, and decided on the warm/cold cycle as a compromise between cleanliness and energy efficiency! Perfect choice!
  

  
• When the time showed up, Batman asked me - is that time in minutes or seconds? Well, that got us talking about minutes and seconds, and what might happen if I add an "extra rinse" setting, or do a heavy soil vs. light soil etc. We made predictions about more time or less time, rather than the number of minutes!
• And then, the most fun part of laundry started. One kid (or mom) picks the clothes from sorted pile, and throws them after balling it up, and the second one, standing in front of the washer, catches it and places it in the washer!! Some gross motor fun...
  

  
• We also do some estimates about how many clothes might fit into the washer, and talk about not overfilling it....

So let's see, a simple thing like laundry, and we learned about responsibility, sharing, science behind dirt and soap, energy efficiency, math fun with sorting, prediction and time, fine and gross motor fun...

Of course, I don't do this every time I do laundry, but often enough, and mostly with the kid's laundry, to motivate them, and to have some fun!

I bet us parents do it all the time, we just don't write elaborate posts about our teachable moments!! But sometimes, we just need to make conscious decisions to go with the flow, and forget about toys, or gadgets, or printables, or books, and just teach as life happens!

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