Follow the Yellow Brick Road

At the end of our last school year we read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (which is a free kindle download on Amazon.)  The girls really love our chapter books and enjoyed the adventure we took together to the Emerald City.  Before we started reading it I added the movie to our library queue so we could watch it for family movie night when we were done.  Sadly, it took 7 months for it to finally be our turn so it was just a bit delayed.  We got our movie on Thursday so I figured Labor Day weekend would be the perfect time to watch it.

We all snuggled up on the sofa for family movie night and watched the movie as the girls eyes lit up and they squealed with delight as each new song was sung.  We compared and contrasted the differences between the book and the movie as we enjoyed the silly antics of the scarecrow, tin man, and cowardly lion.  The girls loved the good witch and thought she was SO beautiful!  It was such a fun evening and great to remember watching this as a young girl with my family.  I'd definitely recommend the Wizard of Oz to anyone else starting out in chapter books with their kiddos.

Now we're on to our next chapter book adventure... it's hard to believe  the girls will be reading them on their own before long. 

Very Silly Sentences

Last year the girls got Very Silly Sentences for their 5th birthday. I didn't think they were ready for it last year, so it remained unopened.  Since the girls are now starting to read a bit I decided it might be a good idea to pull it out for our Friday Funday. 

The game has 2 sides and I decided we would play the shorter version of the game so they wouldn't need to get as many words.  The only problem was, without the prepositions the sentences weren't always structured correctly.  I think next time we'll do the other side so the sentences make more sense. 

The girls needed help reading some of the words, but they really enjoyed it and laughed at all the silly sentences we created.  The paper dice doesn't land on all the sides well since the sides aren't all that straight so we played where they got a card for every turn.  They got the color for the area of the board they were on and then when they only had a space or two left I just had them choose one they needed on their turn.  I wanted the focus to be more on building sentences and sounding out words as opposed to being frustrated that it was taking forever to finish.  It worked well and everyone was happy and got a little intro to proper sentence formation.

Elephant & Piggie

The girls already own an Elephant & Piggie book by Mo Willems which was given to them by a dear friend. They love their book and it's such a cute fun story. We've since starting to check them out from the library from time to time and they really are all cute stories. My favorite was "My Friend is Sad" which is all about Piggie doing funny things to cheer up Gerald the Elephant. Piggie disguises himself as all of Garald's favorite things, but it doesn't cheer up Gerald, he only gets more sad. Piggie finally shows up as herself and Gerald is so happy becuase while all these cool things showed up, it wasn't his best friend Piggie so he was so sad. It's such a sweet story about friendship and teaches a really great lesson! So go check it out, you won't regret it!

Super Why ABC Letter Game

For our last Funday I thought we should play something educational, so I pulled out our Super Why ABC Letter Game! Not only is it fun, but it teaches letters, phonics, reading and spelling. You move your Super Why character around the board and draw a card that corresponds with the space you land on. There are 4 types of cards that do the following:

Alpha Pig with Alphabet Power: Players point to the uppercase letter on the board that matches the lowercase letter on the card.

Wonder Red with Word Power: Players read the words or look at the pictures on the card and say another word or words that rhyme.

Princess Presto with Spelling Power: Players say the word pictured on the card, then point to the first letter or fist two letters of that word on the center of the board.

Super Why with the Power to Read: Players point to the word on the board that should replace the underlined word on the card to make the silly sentence make sense.



I really recommend it as a fun way to interact with your kids and get them to enjoy basic reading and sounding out words. It also helps them get excited when mommy doesn't know the answer and needs their help. ;-)

Oh Charlie!

With the start of school, and our weekly library visits I was itching to read some chapter books to the girls. I had no idea how they would do and if they would be able to focus without pictures. I thought it would go well though so I figured we would give it a try. A few months back I had DVR'd the old school Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and we hadn't yet watched it so I figured that would be a great first book. We spent about 2 weeks going through it. We read it a bit during our 30 minutes of reading time for school, but we often just curled up on their beds at night to read a few chapters before bed.

The girls actually did much better than I expected. Av would get a bit fidgety from time to time, but that's just how she is and she was always paying attention so it didn't seem to matter. Each day before we read any new chapters I would ask them questions about the previous chapters. I wanted to see how well they had understood and remembered what we read, as well as remind them where we were before starting off again. I was kinda surprised at how much they grasped. They always knew the answers to the questions and would often ask me smart questions or think aloud as to what might happen next.

They absolutely loved the book and looked forward to it every day. It was especially fun to finish because we got to watch the movie together with Daddy for Family Movie Night. We had pizza and piled on the sofa and watched the movie together. We talked a bit throughout about what was different from the book. They started pointing out things they noticed and it was fun to watch them compare and contrast on their own. I'm so glad we did this and I'm already looking forward to the next chapter book we read!

Game of the Week

For our last Friday Funday we played a great game Sequence for Kids. This is a game that uses a bit of strategy to try to get 4 of your tokens in a row while also blocking your opponent from getting 4 in a row. The girls loved playing it and did really well. I love that it can be played as a strategy game if you take the time to think through your cards and moves, or just more for fun if you don't care to think about it as much.

It's fun to watch the girls individual personalities in the different ways they play games. Avalyn was all about playing defense and trying to block all our moves where Brin was more into the offensive trying to make 4 in a row of her own. Brinley was definitely strategizing and looking at her cards to try to make the best move, and Av... well she was just throwing cards down without a care... but they both had fun and that's what matters!