Trace and Write Activity Center - A Lakeshore Product Review

I'm so excited to be able to do another review for Lakeshore Learning.  I love their products and when I was given the opportunity to pick something that was on CJ's level (My First Science Experiments) and something on EMan's level (this Trace and Write Activity Center) I was delighted!

As EMan is getting ready to join the ranks of preschoolers in August I'm being more proactive about his summer learning.  I want him to feel prepared for preschool activities and confident that he can do it!  What I'm currently working on with him is letter recognition for the letters in his name. In general, that's a fantastic place to start with preschoolers. 

 This engaging trace and write activity center comes with 26 double sided alphabet cards.  They have the capital letter on one side and the lowercase letter on the other.  The font is a bubble font with dashed lines, directional arrows, with a green dot to represent the starting location and a red dot to represent the ending location.

 You place the letter card on the left side of the board and practice tracing the card.  Then you move to the right side of the board where there is an orange transparent plastic sheet that you can "write" on with the pressure from your finger.  The white board underneath is a squishy board that the orange flap makes a connection with as you write.

EMan loves it and takes ownership of it.  He has requested to take it to church to work on quietly during sacrament meeting, we've taken it on the airplane to keep us busy while traveling and it was the first thing he showed off to his Oma and Opa upon arriving to their home for vacation.

I love it because it prompts engaging conversation about the letter name, sound and how to write the letter.  We are successfully working and playing together.  One of the things I have noticed is that CJ struggles with some letter formation and didn't know how to make the "s" in our last name until a few weeks ago when I specifically taught him that.  How to form letters is something I've missed along the way in the preschool years.  I'm so excited to have a product that makes such and important concept easy to practice.

Inside the Box:

*Sturdy wooden 8x12 inch board

*26 double sided tracing cards

Cost: $24.99

Link: Trace and Write Activity Center

Known as the "Summer Slide", children experience a loss in learning throughout the summer.  Engage children with intentional experiences to boost their summer learning and keep their minds sharp until official (or unofficial) "school" starts again.  Enjoy, and Happy Learning!

Be sure to check out the Lakeshore Learning Back to School Sale going on now with 20% off some of our favorite products!


*I was given a copy of this product from Lakeshore to review.  All opinions are my own. 

Summer Fun - a Summer Intentional Learning Play Group

During the summer I've been hosting Little Learners, an intentional learning play group.  This week we were able to do our Summer Fun curriculum.  Find the free Preschool Summer Packs and Tot Packs here (just scroll down a tad to download them). 

 Days like this are a lot of fun as kids get to explore and play as they like and as parents we focus their attention on little things along the way.  I believe it is important to engage children in gardening and for our lunch we were going to have BBQ Zucchini sandwiches.  You basically cook some shredded zucchini and mix it with your favorite BBQ sauce and use it as sandwich filling.  We love it!  As a group we headed into the garden together to find some zucchinis that were ready to be picked.  Engage little learners by having them find and pick and hold the plants that you're after.  Engage bigger learners by having them "teach" the littles what we're looking for.

 Because the theme was "Summer Fun" we had out the swimming pool and the water wall toys.  (Check out the DIY Water Wall here.)  I love that they all grabbed pipes and were blowing bubbles into this small container together!

 I encourage our intentional learning groups to try to include as many elements of learning as possible.  We had a couple letters to review and had out some do-a-dot markers to decorate the letters.

 It's also a time that I use to demonstrate to parents the introduction of a new concept.  I think of it as teaching parents how to teach their children concepts they wouldn't have thought of.  This week's math concept was "graphing".  We were working with kids as young as 2 and as old as 4.  There were kids who'd never been introduced to it yet, kids who've seen it but not mastered basic graphing, and kids who new exactly what to do.  I love that homeschooling in a small group gives us the beautiful age range where kids can work together to be successful.

 A great large motor activity for younger kids is bouncing them on a large ball.  Hold their hips and bounce them to the front, side to side, and to the back.  This helps them develop different balancing muscles.

 Even CJ (my 4.5 year old) really likes this game even though he's comfortable bouncing on the ball by himself.  EMan just wanted to ride the horse, and that's ok.  Learning and skill development should always be fun and never forced.

 I ABSOLUTELY love this next activity. On a nice warm day, provide your child(ren) with goggles, a small hammer and cubes of ice.  They love to smash those ice cubes!

 Enjoy summer, and happy learning!

DIY Water Wall

I had a conversation with my sister a month back about creating a water play area for her littles in their new back yard.  Then I set up an activity day with my playgroup for water play and put in the description that I'd try and put together some pvc pipe for playing and exploring and promptly forgot.  Just 2 days before said play date I reread the description and found myself suddenly inspired to create a fully customizable water wall.  So, off to Lowes we rumbled.

 We returned home with pvc pipe in 1/2 inch and 1.25 inch and oodles of connectors as well as wooden dowels and peg board. I put the pegboard up on my fence and started drilling holes in the connectors to add dowels. *Note, drill the holes slightly smaller than the dowels.

 I had some help from CJ and EMan along the way.  There are a few things I'd do differently and will most likely still go back to fix.  I'd add glue to the dowels in the pvc so that they don't come off in the peg board and fall behind it.  I'd also glue the tubing inside a pvc connector so that it doesn't fall out so often.  I will also fill up the swimming pool farther away from the water wall from now on.  We were working so hard on building that we tripped over it too many times!

 I did cut all the lengths by hand with our nifty red tool.  My hand muscles were awful sore by the end of the day though.  I did have great intentions to make numerous 1/2 lengths of pipe (2 half circles from each pipe) but it ends up that cutting pipe that direction is hard!

 With pegs in each of the joints we simply stuck pipes in the joints and stuck them to the wall wherever we wanted them.

 This became hours of fun.  In fact, we spent the entire day doing just this.

 I did grab a storage box to keep all the pieces handy for this adventure.

 Our setup provided an excellent opportunity for a lesson in gravity.  Being a gravity operated water wall we talked about how we had to get the water up higher than the tube before it would all go in.

This activity is awesome because it provided everyone the chance to explore on their own playing field.  They could build on the wall if they wanted.  They could just put together pieces on the grass.  They could splash in the swimming pool.  It was great fun for all ages!

 We were still playing when dad got home from work and he rejuvenated our creativity to build even more!

Grab some pieces of pvc and create your own hours of entertainment!