games
My kids and I had a blast playing memory with this homemade memory game that we made with pictures of some of our favorite memories of 2012. As you will see both my kids played ( although they aren’t ready to play against each other yet – their gap in abilities is still too vast) and both loved not only beating mom ( I am terrible at this game) but also retelling stories about each picture and the memory that went with it. Oh and it’s so easy to make.
- Gather your materials. You will need some card stock, double stick tape, digital photos , scissors and marker.
- Choose 6 or more photos of favorite memories of 2012. You can print them out in a collage using a service like picmonkey.com or individually. Make sure you have 2 copies of each picture.
- Cut your pictures out. Mine are all black and white because I ran out of color ink not for any grand reason.
- Tape to the card stock.
- Cut out.
- I added the year on the back for fun. Also I plan on making this year after year.
- Time to play. First up was my wee one. I laid out 8 matches for her although I probably could have done 6.
- She loved seeing the photos of herself – her first day of school with her teacher was her favorite. The excitement was genuine when she made a match. She made six before she asked if she could play with her tea set
Next time I will keep the number of cards lower.
- Then we set it up for my 6 year old.
He got the whole deck and was eager to show off. 
He didn’t know what photos I chose for the game and was happy to recount the stories that went with many of the photos. 
His favorite was a photo of him playing with our contributing writer Kim’s son .
He made matches so quickly and counted them up after each one. It was a perfect opportunity to skip count by two as well.
Happy New Year!
and played with it. I have tried to teach my son and now my daughter about who everyone is in it but it didn’t really stick. My 2 year old refuses to call the angel Gabriel anything other than the Tooth fairy . I decided it was time to learn more about who these people were and the roles they played in the Christmas story. Kids play to learn so making it a game was just what we needed.
by Michelle Medlock Adams is a great board book for little children about Christmas. It touches on all the fun and cultural aspects of Christmas in a positive way but reminds the readers that really it’s about Jesus’ birth. I like the book because it doesn’t make the rest of the traditions out to be wrong or bad but explains that the holiday’s Christian origin in a simple matter of fact way.
by Brendan Powell Smith is actually one of my favorite Christmas books this year. I grabbed it at Costco because my son is all about Lego but I have read it over and over to my kids because it is a great telling of the Christmas story. Now it doesn’t sugar coat much so if you don’t want to read about mean old King Herod and how he ordered babies to be killed then skip it. It really helped explain the story of Jesus’ birth to my 6 year old and the Lego photographs were a great novelty.
This easy Thanksgiving themed game has been lovingly named ” Naked Turkey” at our house . It is so fast to make but the fun will last for a long time. Kids love searching for things and games like this not only works on concentration it also naturally leads to counting, color recognition and sorting.
- Gather your materials. You will need a clean jar, some orange or brown construction paper, some some, googly eyes , tape, markers and feathers.
- Start by cutting out a turkey torso. Think chubby bowling pin cut in half. Add a gobble, beak and glue on some eyes.
- Tape to the jar. I am taping it because I love these jam jars and plan on using it for something else after we are done with this game. As you can see my daughter was collaging scrap paper while I made it, or so I thought.
- Choose a spot in your house to hide the feathers. I do it in my living room because I can shut the doors and keep the kids out while I hide them. Also in a relatively small space a toddler won’t get overwhelmed. do what works for your kids. Can you see any feathers in this picture?
- Invite your feather finders and play! She loved this and so did my son after he got home from school ( but the light was even worse by then so no pics).
- After she found them all we counted them
and sorted them by color, purple first of course!
Since making this on Friday we have played daily with no signs of getting tired of it. My son loves to be the hider and tried to stump my husband and I . I particularly love that the game isn’t too messy to play anytime no matter who is over for Thanksgiving dinner!
There are a lot of homemade Halloween bowling games but the goal of this one isn’t just to have fun knocking down a few ghosts ( although my son sure has had a blast!) it’s also about building fine motor skills, counting and making something together as siblings.
- Gather your materials. You will need some empty water bottles , sticky back black foam, scissors, a few packages of cotton balls and a pumpkin ball.
- Start by filling your bottles with cotton balls. My two year old and I worked together filling her bottle.
This was a challenge for her and her fine motor skills. My son had no problem and happily filled his first bottle in a snap.
- Make it a challenge for fast finishers. I decided to give my son a challenge and asked him to estimate how many cotton balls it takes to fill a bottle, then count to see the difference.
- While your kids fill the bottles cut some eyes from the foam. This sticky back foam is great for crafts when you don’t want to wait for glue to dry .
- When all the bottles are filled peel the backing off the eyes ( more fine motor work)
and pop them on the bottles. 
- Can you tell which one my daughter made?
- Now it’s time to bowl. My daughter got frustrated pretty quickly but I am going to try again today when her brother is at school. I don’t thin it was the activity that frustrated her so much as not being able to do it just like her much more coordinated older brother. He had a blast.
On his own he decided to try out different ways to arrange the ghosts. In a horizontal line, diagonal one, a bunch and then in this X. All I know is he was working on gross motor skills while also experimenting with the most basic of a physics lesson. 
Halloween Books
AlphaOops: H Is for Halloween
Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters
This is a super simple alphabet game that gets kids moving and grooving while they learn their letters. This is part 14 of our Alphabet For Starters series, a series of alphabet activities that use play and exploration to introduce and learn letters. We did the game as a lower and uppercase match but you can adjust it for your needs and child’s abilities. To be honest I wasn’t exactly sure if I was at the target level of learning for my daughter , I wanted it to be challenging but attainable so I enlisted her brother to help. He loved being her guide even though she only needed him a couple of times. Soon he had the controls and I went to warm up my coffee. Here is how you can make your own gross motor alphabet game.
- Gather your materials. You will need some paper or card stock , a marker, painters tape and some good music your kids will dance to. Ours was Call Me Maybe .
- Start buy pushing some furniture out of the way and making letters our of the painter’s tape right on the floor. Don’t feel like you have to do all the letters. Every lesson doesn’t need to cover every letter. I admit I did mostly ones that were easier to make with tape.
- Write the lowercase letters on the paper. ** Adaptations ** You can also write the same uppercase letters and simply have your child match them or for even older kids you can write a word and have them find the first letter.
- Invite the kiddos. To have them start I have them find the first letter of their own names- hands on heads, eyes on me.
- Music starts and they dance !
- Music stops and I hold up a letter.
- They find the match.
- Dance again! Match again.
- This went on for a long time and after it was apparent that my daughter understood and could do most of the letters herself my son wanted to be what he called the ref. So they played solo.
- I went for coffee and popped my head in every now and then. We’d play again but my daughter sneaked into the living room after dinner last night and tore up all the letters. Maybe sometime this week I will put new ones we didn’t have down and we’ll play again. It was a hit and both my 5.5 year old and 2 year old liked it which is not always the case.
50 Alphabet Books
Reading alphabet books has made a world of difference for both my son and my daughter learning their letters and choosing good, interesting and visually awesome books helps. These 50 alphabet books are my favorites . Many have themes and choosing a theme that appeals to your child is a great way to get more reluctant lap sitters or book listeners involved.
