Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Printable Flash Cards for Preschoolers

Over the past few months Andrew and I have been working really hard on his reading. We have been using lessons from this book, along with other activities and seeing some great progress! The book suggests to work through one lesson everyday. This pace is starting to be a bit fast for Andrew, so we often do other activities to reinforce what he's learned before moving onto the next lesson.

Flash Cards have been very helpful when working on sight words and letter sounds. I like to make my own flash cards using PicMonkey, so that I can add graphics or phonetic notation.


This week I decided to spice things up a bit for Andrew, and threw in some of his favourite Super Heroes and Villains. I made two sets of these cards, one with a small image and one without. These words are a bit difficult for Andrew, but once he practises enough with the image I will bring out the others and he should be fine. After all, he sees these words in many places!


We use our flash cards in a variety of ways. Andrew's favourite is to read the word and then smack it with an object from my utensil drawer (odd, but whatever motivates him!). We also like to turn them all upside down and take turns flipping them over and reading the word. 

I thought that some of you might be interested in printing these off for your little one, so below are the first five lists of common sight words, a blank template, and our first set of Super Heroess. Just right click on the image and save it to your computer, and then print the JPEG!









Wednesday, March 5, 2014

A party planning journal...

Today, I wanted to share a simple party planning idea that I use whenever I am getting organized for a party. I have been using a Party Planning Journal for years, for parties big and small!

party planning journal

The idea is simple (and probably used by many), grab a notebook and give it the job of housing all of your lists when getting organized for entertaining. For dinner parties I usually just jot down the menu, but for birthday parties I include the guest list, games and decoration ideas.

party planning journal

What I find most useful about having this information all in one place is that I can look back to see what  I served at previous parties. That way I can make sure I'm not always serving the same food to our guests! It's also helpful when brainstorming a menu to see whats worked well in the past.

party planning journal

I recently filled my original party planning journal and had to start a new one. I chose this pretty Martha Stewart journal and added a festive touch with some silhouette vinyl cut outs. It's a great size to take along to the grocery store and looks super cute sitting out on my desk!