moms and muffins

Welcome!

Moms & Muffins 2010

Thank you for joining us! This presentation features

ideas for learning with your children now and over the summer months!

Keep your eyes peeled for photos of your child as well!

Plan to eat dinner as a family as often as

possible this month to share educational

experiences.

Read a poem. Let your child guess

what the next rhyming word will be.

Visit a library. Get a card for your child. Check out some

books.

Learn a tongue- twister with your

child.

Share memories of a special holiday with your child.

Read a story. Make puppets out of small paper bags. Put on a

puppet show.

Take a walk. Look for signs of the

season. Talk about what you see.

Create a family tree and have your child draw the portraits

of the family members.

Make a personalized

bookmark with your child.

Help your child decorate a box. Put

it by the door to hold homework and

books.

Put reading skills to practical use. Gather bus and subway route

maps and schedules to a special place in your area -- the zoo, a

museum, a football stadium. Let your child plan a trip for friends or family. Figure out the travel time required, the cost, and the best

time to make the trip.

Play a game after reading the

directions together.

You are free to visit the book fair this

morning starting at 8:30 AM…

Find a cozy place to read a favorite story. Have your

child retell the story.

When driving with your child, turn off the music and talk about

the day's events.

Read about Pennsylvania’s state

symbols with your child.

Read directions for a project. Work

together to create the project.

Turn a large calendar -- commercial or home made --

into a personalized family communication center. Have your children fill in the blanks

with morning messages, weather reports, birthdays,

special activities, or notes to the family.

Watch a nature program on TV. Talk about what

you see.

Let your child see YOU reading and

writing. Write a long overdue note to a

friend.

Use the Weather newspaper section or

weather websites to check temperatures across the

nation and the world. This is good geography

practice, too.

Cut a comic strip apart. Have your

child create a map of your home.

Choose a new recipe. Read it

together and have fun making it.

Cut words out of the newspaper.

Arrange them on paper to make a new sentence.

Have a treasure hunt. Leave picture

or word clues to follow to reach the

treasure.

Discuss baseball and football scores and

averages on the sports pages. Who are the high

scores? What are the percentages?

Start reading a story and stop

before the end. Ask your child to predict

the ending.

Have your child describe a family member or friend. Guess who it is.

Take a walk. Close your eyes and listen for the sounds of summer.

Make a list of the sounds!

Make a family time capsule!

Help your child plant flower or vegetable

seeds. Make a graph to chart their growth.

Have your child write a note to a friend or

relative. Be sure to mail it!

Students may NOT arrive at homeroom before 8:45 AM.

Start telling a familiar story. Have your child write a

new ending.

Have your child make a list of

enjoyable things to do. Describe what makes them fun.

Talk to your child about fire safety. Discuss a fire escape route and have a mock fire drill.

Help your child write and illustrate

a story about a favorite animal.

Read many stories with rhyming words and lines

that repeat. Invite the child to join in on these parts.

Point, word by word, as he or she reads along with

you.

Discuss new words. For example, "This big house is called a palace. Who do you think lives in a

palace?"

Teach classification skills with dinnerware. Ask your child to

match and stack dishes of similar sizes and shapes. Also have your child sort flatware -- forks with forks, spoons with

spoons.

Promote creativity and build muscle control with a pail of

water and a brush. On a warm day, take your children outside to the driveway or sidewalk and

encourage them to write anything they wish. Talk about

what they've written.

Make fractions fun. Fold paper towels or napkins into large and small fractions. Start with halves

and move to eighths and sixteenths. Use magic markers

to label the fractions.

On trips, make a game of measuring

distances and times.

Teach estimating skills. Ask your children to guess the weight of several household objects -- a waste basket, a coat, a full glass of water. Then show

children how to use a scale to weigh the objects. Next, have them estimate their

own weight, as well as that of other family members, and use the scale to

check their guesses. Some brave parents get on the scale, too!

Encourage hypothesizing (guessing). Use several objects --

soap, a dry sock, a bottle of shampoo, a wet sponge, an empty bottle. Ask your child which objects will float when dropped into water in

a sink or bathtub. Then drop the objects in the water, one by one, to

see what happens.

Do an online search for educational games and

activities. You’ll be amazed at the variety of free resources available

for children! And most are FREE!

Have your children select four or five pictures from magazines and

newspapers, and put them together to tell a story. Ask your children to number the pictures -- 1,2,3, etc. First, ask them

to tell the story with the pictures in numerical order. For variety, have your

children rearrange the pictures and tell a new story using this different

arrangement.

"Parents and families are the first and most important teachers.

If families teach a love of learning, it can make all the difference in the

world to our children."

"Parents and families are the first and most important teachers.

If families teach a love of learning, it can make all the difference in the

world to our children."

-Richard W. Riley

Thanks for a Great Year!

References

• http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/summertime.fun.html

• http://www.justreadfamilies.org/greatideas/