Educational Summer?

I have to admit that this summer, my organized educational activities have ranked few and far between. I drive the kids crazy with little learning reminders, but we love to do actual planned activities. We have managed to do a couple that some may want to try....

I ordered Little Man the Little Kids National Geographic Magazine for some non-fiction reading last year. We love it! There are so many little articles/activities that are on his level. There is a science experiment activity included in each magazine. We started a Science journal to record all our findings. This journal also holds some of the experiments that I take from the show, Sid the Science Kid.

To learn the shapes, I cut shapes out of sandpaper (using my cricut) and glued to cardstock. Then we used colored masking tape to make larger shapes. We actually turned this into a game by rolling a dice to a shape, then jumping to it while naming each one:

Same idea as the shapes except using numbers:

We used shaving cream to practice letters, numbers, shapes, and drawing a face. I would draw the item on a white board then the kids have to tell me what it is and try to draw it themselves. This is a great tactile activity and reinforces skills learned. I used to do this with ketchup when the kids were younger. We would do right before bath in a diaper or I would just put the ketchup in a ziplock baggie and let them squish away.

I am not sure why, but my brain works in themes. It often drives me (and everyone around me) crazy particularly around trip time. I like to put together activities for the ride to our vacation destination. I found this website that has some really great learning ideas for toddlers...one of my personal favs! On this site are tot books (activity books). Well, for our last trip, I found activities to go with movies the kids had. This is an example of something we did.

I am working on some activities for our trip to South Carolina...I will take some pics and share later.