It's hard to believe it's been three weeks for us since school got out.  Time just moves so quickly but we are enjoying learning and playing outside when we can.  Here is July's number tracing calendar and other July items.

I also made ice cream cone themed days of the week and months of the year strips that can be used in pocket charts or in your calendar centers. We also do sequencing and matching with them. Just print ... cut ... and laminate.

number tracing calendar

calendar numbers and other items

days and months

Reading aloud to young children is extremely beneficial to stimulating language development and cognitive skills.  It also promotes curiosity ... motivation ... and listening skills

When children are read to they develop a positive experience with books and reading that will carry on through their school years and beyond. One-on-one reading time with a parent or care provider also gives young children important bonding and nurturing time with adults.

Even reading aloud to young children for as little as fifteen minutes a day can provide many benefits that can not be gained through normal conversations or screen time.

Here are just a few of my favorite books to read to young children:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar
By Eric Carle

My Very First Mother Goose
Edited by Iona Opie

Is Your Mama a Llama?
By Deborah Guarino

Goodnight Moon
By Margaret Wise Brown

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed
By Eileen Christelow

Guess How Much I Love You
By Sam McBratney

Dear Zoo
By Rod Campbell

In the Tall, Tall Grass
By Denise Fleming

Good Night, Gorilla
By Peggy Rathmann

Love You Forever
By Robert Munsch

The Snowy Day
By Ezra Jack Keats

Time to Get Dressed!
By Elivia Savadier

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
By Bill Martin, Jr.

For even more book suggestions you can download my book list.

Please leave a comment and let me know what your favorite books are to read to your little ones!!

I made a strawberry lacing card for the children to work on fine motor development as well as eye-hand coordination. I printed the pattern on cardstock paper and glued it on to another sheet of cardstock paper for extra durability.

I then cut the strawberry out and laminated it and then cut it out again.  The next step was to punch the holes. I left the strawberry blank so you could decide how far apart you wanted to punch the holes for the children to lace.

I tied a lacing cord to the bottom of the strawberry but if you do not have lacing cord you can also use yarn.  You may want to put tape around the lacing end of the yard to make it easier to guide into the punched holes.

You can download the strawberry lacing card pattern here.

The free membership printable this week is strawberry letter match which is a great activity for letter recognition and review as well as fine motor development. I printed the patterns on cardstock paper ... cut them out and laminated them.

I put the stawberries and letter circles in a basket along with some clothespins. I set the basket out on table but this activity can also be done on the floor.

In this activity children pick and strawberry and find the letter circle that matches the letter on the strawberry.  They then clip the two together with a clothespin.  If you did not want to use clothespins the children can just set the letter circle on top of the strawberry.

You can grab the patterns for free until Sunday June 26th ... after that they will only be available in the member's section which is also where the strawberry number match is located.

We have used water beads for a variety of activities and the children really enjoyed them.  I recently found a source for jumbo water beads and decided to give them a try to see what they were like.

I purchased them from etsy but the same seller also sells on ebay.  The water beads were around 7.00 dollars for a package of 24 but the seller included a few extra in case of damage during shipping.

The jumbo beads start out the same size and the finished size of the original water beads.  Because they are small objects you will want to use very close supervision for children under five.

I put the beads in a bucket of room temperature water and made sure the beads always had enough water to cover them.  The instructions that came with the beads were not the clearest as to the specific time frame it would take for the water beads to reach full size.

After one hour of soaking the beads in water they developed the look and texture of raspberries.  I was surprised how much they had grown in such a short time period.

After fours hours in water the beads had grown larger and developed smooth ridges.  The outer area of the beads started to become transparent while the center remained solid.

After twenty-four hours the beads had grown very large but still had some dimples on them which indicated that there was still room for them to grow.  The instructions stated the water beads could take 2-4 days to reach full size.

After forty-eight hours the beads had reached their full size and and we did sorting of colors and sizes as well as counting activities.  The children also free
played with them in the water which was for a sensory play activity.

We observed the changes together and the children could pick the beads up while observing but I always made sure that I was there to supervise.  After the beads reached there full-size they are pretty hard to break by just squeezing them.

You can see a video of the jumbo water beads below:

We made paper plate ladybugs this week and they turned out super cute.  We did this project over a two day period to make sure we had enough time for the paint to dry.

To make the lady you will need red paint ... glue ... scissors ... black construction paper ... wiggles eyes ... and paper plates.  We used the thicker chinette brand for our paper plates.

The first step is to paint the back of the paper plates red. You can do this by using a paint and paint brush or a paint dauber.  After we painted the plates we let them dry for the rest of the day.

We cut head shapes out of black construction paper and glued them on to the bottom of the paper plates.

The next step was to glue wiggle eyes on the heads.  If you do not have wiggle eyes a different color of construction paper such as yellow or blue cut into small circles will work fine.

We cut circle shapes out of black construction paper and glue them on to the painted paper plate.  You can put as many or as little spots on the ladybugs as you want.

We cut black construction paper into 3-4 inch lengths and folded them back and forth (accordion style) for the legs.  We glued three on each side of the paper plate.

We hung our ladybugs up around the room.  The children got lots of fine motor practice through the use of scissors and gluing pieces together.

You can see a video of this project below: