Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Summer Learning Series: Learning with Cheez-its

Every child loves summer. Summer is a time for playing outside, swimming in the pool, and hanging out with your friends. Unfortunately, summer is also a time when kids lose a lot of what they learned during the previous year of school. As an elementary school teacher, it was frustrating to watch my students struggle at the beginning of each year with objectives that they had mastered the previous year. As a parent, I want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to my children. This summer, I will be setting aside a little time each day for some fun learning activities for my kids. Starting in June, check in each Monday if you are looking for some activities for your kids. I will be posting a few things we did the previous week to share. Also if you are interested in doing the same thing, I would love to link up with all you creative moms out there! Just shoot me an email and let me know you are interested. (kellymalinowski@hotmail.com ) Let’s work together to help our children have a fun, but educational summer!


This week the girls and I did a fun little exercise with our Cheez-its. That’s right, I said Cheez-its. If you go to your local grocery store, you will notice that they have many different types of Cheez-its. Last week, I picked up a box of Scrabble Cheez-its. Every cracker in the box looks like a Scrabble tile with a letter on top. This activity can be done in many different variations depending on your child’s age. First, give each child a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and a pile of Cheez-its. For my six year old, I told her to make ten words out of her Cheez-its. Every time she found a word, she wrote it on her paper so that she could use her Cheez-it letters again.

She had a lot of fun and got so excited every time she discovered a new word. Although she only wrote her ten down, she continued finding words after the activity was done. For my 4 year old, I altered the activity a bit. Since she can read most three-letter words, I gave her one word at a time to find. This was easier for her than pulling a random word out of her head, but she was still practicing her letter sounds and spelling words. After she found her words, she also wrote them on her paper (very proudly, I might add).

If you have a child that is just learning letters and sounds, you can simplify this activity even more. For the younger kiddos, write the words on the paper for them. Then have them search through the pile of Cheez-its and find the matching letters. If your child is more advanced, challenge them to find 4-letter and 5-letter words. This activity also works real well with Alphabits. When the activity is done, let the children eat their well-deserved snack!
                                                                                               

10 comments:

Unknown said...

That's a great activty. You are so creative.

Tori said...

What neat cheese itz!!! I hope they have these in the fall when I am back in my classroom!!

Also you can use the crackers for math to add, subtract, count, fractions the possibilities are endless!!

Tori
http://thriftytori.blogspot.com/

Emily said...

This is a great idea, my girls have been out 2 weeks and we're already running out of idea's, lol! I'll have to pick these up!

Sarah said...

super cute idea- I'm going to try them out on my nieces and nephews! the spin with food makes it so much more fun for them than normal scrabble blocks; good job!

Angela @ Nine More Months said...

Very cool idea!

Kel said...

I'm glad everyone likes the idea. If you have a post you'd like to link up, let me know. I love getting new ideas.

Brittany said...

LOVE this! Aidyn loves finding letters all around.. signs/billboards/tv/etc... this would be another great idea :)

Liz Mays said...

Even I would have fun doing that!

Amy said...

that is a great way to learn for sure.. I loved that idea.. My little one is only 2 1/2 years old and I will see what you show and bring it down to her level if I can. I could do letter with this one. Thanks..

Have a wonderful night..

thegreengirl said...

Ha, I saw those at the store the other day and thought, I'm not buying them they'll only want to play with their food...what a great idea! Thanks!

http://maryhadalittlethought.blogspot.com/