Foam Board Magnetic Marble Run

Here's an inexpensive homemade version of a 2D magnetic marble run I found online. I wanted to buy it, but it was really expensive and sold in Switzerland.

Materials:
colored foam board
utility knife or x acto knife  
large cutting board
ruler
pencil
removable adhesive
strong magnets

Directions:
Make a plan for your pieces.
Draw your plan on the foam board.
Cut out pieces using utility knife and ruler if lines aren't curved.
Attach magnets with reusable adhesive.
Magnets - ceramic 3/4 inch #6 magnetic strength from Hobby Lobby
Adhesive - Simply Tacky from Hobby Lobby

Here's a video of the foam board magnetic marble run in action.  


My kids have been combining this marble run with a plastic bottle magnetic marble run we made and having a lot of fun. These marble runs were made for an event for a local children's museum start-up. You can find out more about the children's museum and the plastic bottle marble run at this link.

Magnetic Marble Run with Plastic Bottles and Milk Jug Handles

Here's an easy to make homemade marble run you and your kids can make.

Materials:
plastic bottles
gallon plastic milk jugs
electrical tape
strong magnets
craft glue that adheres to plastic.

Directions:
Choose uniform size plastic bottles.
Remove labels and wash.

 Cut bottles and milk jug handles.

Add tape to cover sharp edges, decorate, and conceal the magnets.

Glue on magnets and let dry overnight.

 Here's a video of the Plastic Bottle and Milk Jug Handle Marble run.
 

All three of my kids ages 10, 10, an 12 are having fun with the plastic bottle marble run. They like to combine the plastic bottle marble run with another marble run we made.

Both marble runs were made for a local children's museum without walls event. Our local children's museum doesn't have a building yet. A steering committee is currently working towards its mission by getting out to the community with mobile exhibits at various venues and raising funds to make the dream of a children's museum in Billings, Montana a reality. Check out Wise Wonder's Facebook page, and if you live in Billings be looking for many local events to engage your children's curious, creative, and scientific minds through playful learning.
These marble runs and other playful learning activities will be available for play and exploration February 1, 2014 from 10am - 4pm at the Family Life Expo at the Metra Park Pavilion in Billings, Montana.

Reading to Babies and Preschoolers

Talk and Read with Children Birth to Two 

Your child will learn about language and books.

Make an extra effort to talk about what you are doing, talk about what you see, and talk directly to your infant throughout the day. Some parents feel silly doing this, but it makes a big difference in the language development of a child.

Play games like peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, and this little piggy.

Recite nursery rhymes and sing lullabies.

Ask questions. Give your child many opportunities to share his or her thinking.

Answer your child's questions, even the all too repeated question, "Why?"

Expand your child's short phrases. If your child says, "Up!" when he or she wants in a high chair you can say, "Yes. You want up in your high chair. Let's put you up here in your high chair."

Have books accessible to your child. Children this age like to explore books on their own. Cloth, vinyl, and cardboard books are good choices for this age group. Let your child touch and even chew on books. By the age of two you can teach your child the proper way to treat books.

Start a routine of reading to your child.

Stop reading if your child is fussy or uninterested.

Find a comfortable position where your child can see and touch a book free from distractions when reading and exploring a book.

Your voice can increase interest. Sometimes the calm soothing sound of your regular voice is best, but sometimes you can make a book more interesting by changing your voice. You can change voices for different characters or make your voice louder, softer, higher, lower, happy, excited, or silly.

Books don't have to be read from beginning to end. You can point to and talk about pictures instead of reading the words. If a child really enjoys a page, you can read it over and over.

Let your child join in the "reading" of a book. A child can point to pictures, turn pages, point to words, pretend read, make noises, and talk about a book.

Children this age love bright and bold pictures. Books should be simple. Some include rhyme or repeated language. Cloth, vinyl, and cardboard books are a must if you let your little one touch and play with books.

Toddlers and Preschoolers are Learning About Reading From You

Spend time exploring letter names, letter sounds, and letter shapes.

Read books with rhyme. Pause and let your child "read" a rhyming word based on meaning, memory, picture clues, or beginning sound.

Read books with repeated language. You can share read a story with repeated language. Invite your child to chime in with his or her voice on parts he or she knows. Your child may even want to take over "reading" parts of the story.

Read books with an interesting story. Have your child guess what might happen next in a story. Share if the story reminds you of any other stories or something you remember in your life. Ask your child to connect the story to other stories or his or her life. Talk about new and interesting words.

Let your child pretend read a familiar book. Your child can turn the pages and tell the story in his or her own words or try to remember it word for word. Pretend reading should be fun and not exact.

Have paper and writing utensils available. Encourage your child to draw and express him or herself through writing.Early writing may consist of scribbles and random letters.

If your child is writing his or her name, you should teach your child to make a capital for the first letter and lowercase for the rest. Help your child form letters in the way you or your local school will be expecting. Once a child has practiced making letters many times, muscle memory takes over. It is very hard to stop and make letters the proper way. I know this from experience with my oldest son and many other children.

Find books for children with rhyme, repeated language patterns, and interesting plots.

Online Learning Websites for Kids

There are many free online learning websites available, but some are filled with advertising and silly games.

My Absolute FAVORITE Subscription Websites for Kids

Sometimes you get what you pay for . . . 

Carefully chosen subscription learning programs will be free from advertising and provide exactly the learning a child needs. Don't waste time on poorly designed learning sites. Your child's time is valuable. Make the most of your child's online learning time by choosing a subscription learning program.

The Reading Teacher and I See Sam Books is an amazing reading program available at an affordable price for preschool, kindergarten, early elementary students, and homeschooling families. A yearly subscription is $47 for one account with up to five children. There are animated books, book quizzes, assessments, videos, songs, lessons, and teaching tips.

K5 Learning is an at home online reading, math, math facts, and spelling program for kindergarten to fifth grade students. You can choose to subscribe monthly or yearly. This program is perfect for families who want a little extra learning just over the summer or homeschooling families to use all year. There are discounts for additional children. A monthly subscription is $25 for the first child and $15 for additional children. A yearly subscription is $199 and $129 for additional children. My family and a good friend's family have used this online learning program and give K5 Learning positive reviews. Check it out for yourself. There's a free trial with no credit card required.

Total Reader is an online program that can monitor and increase your child's reading level. High quality fiction and non-fiction passages with fill in the blank assessments monitor a child's reading level and continue to give reading practice at a subscriber's reading level for an entire year for only $39.95. There is a 10% discount for additional subscribers on the same account. Total Reader also gives subscribers recommended books based on readers' interests and reading levels.

I highly recommend these sites to you and have become an affiliate with all three after careful evaluation and use of each program.

Improve Working Memory

Working memory can be improved with practice. Working memory is the chunks of information we can hold in our heads and use to decide whether or not to file it away for remembering and using later or let drop out. Young children typically can hold less information in working memory than adolescents and adults. When people learn to chunk information together in meaningful ways more information can be held in working memory.

Here's an example for sounding out a word.

A person could try to read a word by individual sounds or read it by syllables.

i  n  t  e  r  e  s  t  i  n  g   (This is eleven chunks of information if the word is read sound by sound.)

in ter est ing

The second example is using 4 chunks of information in working memory until the whole word interesting is now held in working memory, then the word with become part of a sentence, and then part of an image or thought in the mind of the reader.

Here's a site with online games to improve working memory. You can have limited access and free daily training on areas you choose to practice by registering. I've been doing it for awhile for free and just started my youngest son on the program. I'm not getting compensated for this post by Luminosity. I just think the games are helpful and fun.
Luminosity

Choosing Ten Children's Books

What ten books do I think should be included in every children's library?

This post is a response to a writing prompt from Share-A-Story Shape A Future 2013.
Here's the writing prompt: If you were creating a children's library from scratch, what ten books would you start with, and why?
I found it difficult to choose only ten books. Here are the children's books I finally choose to include in this post and why.


10 Really Good Books for Children:

Good Night Moon

This is a wonderful book filled with rhymes, repeated language, and illustrations babies and toddlers love! It's a perfect book for bedtime reading. Little ones can find the mouse and point to objects in the pictures. Many toddlers and young children like to pretend read this story or fill in words while it's read to them.

Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?


This book helped my oldest son learn to read. He was learning his letter sounds and words like moo, too, and boom showed him that letters can work together to make one sound. Plus this book is so fun with the rhyming and crazy pictures. It's a book kids want to have read to them over and over!

Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree


Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree was a favorite read aloud in my house. This book has kids counting, laughing, and looking! It can help little ones learn to count to five too. The illustrations are so cute. If you look close enough, you can see the monkeys hiding in the tree in case you though they got eaten by Mr. Crocodile. My kids loved the big red word SNAP that appears in the book when the crocodile tries to eat the monkey who teases it.

Counting Crocodiles
Here's a video of the illustrator showing how he
made the first drawings for the book.

Counting Crocodiles was another favorite read aloud in my house. The rhymes, repeated language, silliness, and amazing detailed pictures made this book fun to read well over a hundred times.

What a Bad Dream

I love this book and children do too! Little Critter dreams he drinks a magic potion and gets to do crazy things without an adult telling him what to do. Then he gets lonely and wants a bedtime story. His parents wake him up just in time. This is another of my family's favorite read alouds. Can you tell I think reading aloud is super important?

Hop on Pop

Kids love to hear this story read aloud over and over too. The really cool part about this book is that spelling patterns and sounding out rules can be taught with this book.

Are You My Mother?

This is another book that children ask to be read to them again and again. It has adventure as the bird who falls out of his nest searches for his mother. It has kindness as he is placed back in his nest. It has a beautiful ending with love between the mother bird and her baby. It's a great story to read right before tucking in your little ones.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I chose this book, because it's fun illustrations and great words for early readers. This is a good book for early readers there are pictures to support a reader and words that early readers can sound out as they learn letter sounds and letter combination sounds.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is a good read aloud with some humor. It is also a good chapter book for children who are showing some confidence in reading independently to enjoy on their own or to read aloud.

Red Midnight

Red Midnight is an action packed book. That will hook a reader from beginning to end. This book would be appropriate for children age nine and up. There is some violence, so a parent may want to preview the book first. I've read this book twice. All three of my children read it and loved it. My youngest son still says it's his favorite book ever.

There's my list. I hope you found a few books you like.
Happy Reading!
Michelle Breum
Owner of Parent and Child Reading Assistance

Getting Good Grades

Are grades important to you and your children?

Some children need help developing a healthy attitude toward grades and learning.

Grades are there to motivate students to work hard. Sometimes a grade does not reflect how much a student has learned.

Good grades "given" to a student who is not motivated by learning and hard work can give a student a sense of academic entitlement.

Read this informative article to learn more and help your children avoid academic entitlement.

Seven Ways to Help Children Avoid Academic Entitlement