I just decided to roll it all into one post.
First of all, I highly recommend this (I don’t get a kick back, we’re just really enjoying it):
http://www.imp-usa.com/us/jsp/public/prodarea/prod_wex.jsp
Wildlife Explorer Brings The Animals of The World to Your Home
Now you can share your love of animals with your family.The Wildlife Explorer® collection is a series of colorful, informative fold-out cards that bring the beauty and majesty of the animal kingdom into your home. The collection covers over 820 species and 240 other wildlife topics. Wildlife Explorer cards are perfect for school reports and collecting them is an exciting hobby the whole family can enjoy together!Imagine taking your family on a fascinating wildlife expedition…a journey around the world…a voyage of discovery and learning where the fun never ends!
This collection of the world’s finest wildlife cards expertly covers the following categories:
* Mammals
* Birds
* Reptiles & Amphibians
* Fish
* Invertebrates
* Exploring Behavior
* Conservation Issues
* Wildlife Explorer
It is like, 20 and change for three packets at once, and you get it every 3 weeks or so. So it can add up, but they are great fold-out cards, and have a ton of info on them. I figure I’ll cancel it once all the categories have a good amount of cards in them.
Second, I picked up this book: Literacy Bags Make and Take mini units from a to z. I ordered bags from oriental trading, and I’m going to stencil something on each of them that starts with the letter it is, and Dor will have them (and Chai and Esh I hope!). The book is put out by Creative Teaching Press, I picked it up at ACE, I’m sure you can get it from Amazon or someplace similar. It has a ton of reproducable crafts, stories, stuff for every letter. It’s designed for teachers to send them home with students for a week at a time, but it’ll work great at home too. I am going to get a bin to store them in.
Third, I picked up a magazine called “The Mailbox” It’s for teachers, it have bullitin board ideas, craft ideas, theme unit ideas, etc.. It’s 5.95 and comes out 6 times a year. I got the preschool one for Feb/Mar. The craft stuff has reproducable templates, books all sorts of stuff.
Dor has been watching those LeapFrog videos daily. He gets up in the morning and puts them in, so that’s turned into our “morning lesson.” It lets me doze a little longer, and he sings the letter sounds. He spelled the word CAT for me the other day, wrote it down, and sounded it out. Chai followed suit and wrote CAT! Dor has been singing the letter songs for a week now. Which is nice, because while he had been retaining it when I did it, he didn’t enjoy it at much. I am hoping the videos, coupled with the letter bags, will help him read. I also got a gset of books called “AlphaTales” that is 26 books a to z, the first is Abby Alligator, and she wants to be an astronaut, actress, etc… The teachers aid with that has smaller versions of the books kids can colour in,cut out, staple together. They will be going into the alphabet bags as a craft.
