I Can Build Lowercase Letters!! by Fundanoodle

*This post may contain affiliate links.

Heidi, a very kind Education Ambassador with Fundanoodle sent me a set of I Can Build Lowercase Letters.  These things are AWESOME!  What are they?  They are magnets that are shaped like the straight lines and curves you will find in lowercase letters.

These things can be used in so many ways, but I do believe, they will be a perfect fit for Adam who will be 3 and a half as we enter the new school year.  Adam has a mean pencil grip and is just starting to follow lines in order to trace letters, but what he can also do really well, is stick magnets to a board.  This magnet set will allow Adam to explore letter formation in a fun new way.

There is a Color Coded Alphabet Key that comes with the set and it tells you which colors you will need to make each letter.  Like 4 light pink magnets to make a w.

First, let me show you how we spent some time playing with them today.  We played with our magnets on this Fisher Price magnet writing board.  I am not sure of their official name.  I showed him how the magnets left a mark on the board and he quickly took a magnet and filled the whole screen in black by sliding it back and forth.

As he was messing around with the fun of the magnet I started building letters off to the side so he could get another idea of what they could do.  Looking at the Color Coded Alphabet Key I saw that to build m I would need one pink and two purples.  I grabbed the magnets and then set to work trying to figure out how to make an m out of my supplies.  It's a bit like a puzzle and fun for even an adult to see these weird shapes come together to make a letter.

 Here I made i and d.

I really like that the cross line in f is made with one solid line even though it doesn't lay flat on the surface.  When you draw this line it should be one long line, not segmented.  Unfortunately, my older boys sometime draw an f or a t by drawing the cross line as two lines instead of one fluid one.  So to me, these details are important.

 After he had a while to just explore the materials, I showed him how if you lay the magnet down carefully and then pick it straight up, it will leave it's mark on the board.  He thought the i looked like a person and so he started to create families on his board.

I saw the brown half circle piece and wondered how it would be used so I searched out the letter or letters it would be used in.  Turns out it's only used in one letter and that's the letter e.

Z was fun and colorful.  This time I overlapped the magnets instead of keeping them separate like I did for the W and I think it looks a lot better.

 Adam knows his shapes pretty well and he like making a circle with the dot used for the i and j.

And I am sure you have heard this a lot, but this kind of work with the hands is a great fine motor building activity and that is a huge and important step to success in writing.

 He discovered how to make another circle with two of the curved magnets.

This was a fun introduction to these new learning tools and a great way for him to get excited about them.  But I have a great plan on how to use them for some real serious learning fun.

Each month with Mother Goose Time we learn 3 new letters.  My plan is to set up a tray with just the magnets needed to make one of those letters at a time.  Set before him in this way, it won't be too overwhelming.  I just ordered a magnet board that will stand up on the table in front of Adam and I will place the magnets on the board to form the letter.  He can then see how it is supposed to look and recreate it.  Once the letter is formed he can trace the letter with his finger.  We can get out the corresponding Muscle Mover Card too and trace those and do the recommended movement.  I can lay the magnet board down and he cold roll out play-doh to lay on the letter.  The possibilities are endless.

I can't wait for Adam to have more tools as he learns his letters and letter formation.  It's a much more global way to learn (all parts of his brain and body involved in learning) and is far superior to paper and pencil alone.

Experience Baby - A Great Baby Shower Gift

Why do you need an infant curriculum?

Mother Goose Time from Experience Early Learning is always trying to top themselves.  They saw a need for an infant curriculum and they filled that need.  Experience Baby is a relationship based model which provides experiences to support learning and development.  Now you might think, infant curriculum, really?  But let me assure you, there are no worksheets, no tests.

At it's chore, the Experience Baby curriculum is a guided walk through infant development.  I have three children.  With child number one, I had no idea what he was capable of at an early age.  I would often show up at the doctor's office for his routine check ups and they would ask me developmental marker questions.  I would often answer, well no, he hasn't done that. It wasn't because he couldn't do those things, but because I had not offered those things to him.  I would walk away thinking, I didn't know he could do those things.  On the flip side, he started walking at 10 months, so obviously he was well ahead on some development too.

Three kids later and 5 years of Mother Goose Time use, which is also, in my opinion, Early Childhood Education training, and I am much better at knowing what an infant, toddler and preschooler are capable of.  Now let me reassure you, my poor first son, Lachlan is incredibly smart, and such a kind and loving boy.  I just sometimes wish I had known more.

That's why I think that Experience Baby would be a spectacular baby shower gift for a first time Mom, but really for any Mom with an infant on the way.

What's included?

Experience Early Learning put together a video of everything included in the Experience Baby curriculum, and it's really the best way to see and understand it all.

I was able get a hold of a box for my dear friend Dana, whose little one was born on January 10th.  The Experience Baby curriculum is for infants 3 months to 18 months and she will be 3 months so soon.  She received the Nursery Rhyme Experience Baby box and I was able to take a few pictures.

This is how the box arrives, it's adorable of course.  The Teacher Bundle comes in a canvas bag.  

 Inside the Teacher Bundle you will receive a music CD with word plays, instrumental songs, nursery rhyme, folktales and lullaby songs that go along with the monthly theme.  You also get these Shared Experience Cards, 36 each month.

 They are color coded according to the experiences they provide.  Purple is for Connect & Communicate, green is for Play & Explore and orange is for Move & Grow.  When you flip them over they give recommendations on how to connect with the three different age groups.  Young Infant is considered 3 months to 6 months, Older Infant is from 6 months to 12 months and Young Toddler is from 12 months to 18 months.  Each of these cards are designed to guide an infant in developing in a specific skill.  That skill is shown in the top left corner.  First you see a small square graphic indicating the skill and then numbers.  This card says 2.2 and 10.2.  You can look up those numbers on the Early Learning Continuum of Skills which you can see below.

This continuum comes as part of the Teacher Bundle and I think it's the crown jewel of this box.  It has a description of what a child should be able to do in regards to that skill at the three different levels.

 So if your infant is 3 months, you can look under the Young Infant column, see what they should be doing at this stage, in this skill, and know pretty quickly if you are on track.  There are many reasons you may want to know this, just simply for your comfort and relief.  But the most important reason to know where your infant falls on this continuum is so that you can find out what comes next.  It's called scaffolding, which sounds fancy, but all that means is if you know where they are now with a skill and you know what comes next, you can work on slowly and incrementally guiding them to that next level.  Simple.  And the Shared Experience Cards will help you do it.  You can see the Early Learning Continuum of Skills a lot more clearly in this PDF.

Also included in the monthly Teacher Bundle is the Planning Calendar which is a mapped out guide of how to use all the cards each month.  You also get a new pocket cube each month and cube cards to insert in the pockets.

The next part of the curriculum is the Baby Bundle.  This part includes the Travel Journal which I sadly did not get a picture of.  This journal has a place to mark down details about diaper changes, feeding, nap times and length and a place to write in what Experience Cards were accomplished that day.   You will have to watch the video to see it for yourselves.  But this is where the Experience Baby curriculum becomes the perfect gift for a new Mom who will be returning to work.

If you are staying at home with your infant you can use all these tools yourself, if you are going back to work, you can bring this kit to your infant care provider, if they aren't using it already.  If you don't want to bring the whole kit, because you want to use the cards at home, you can at minimum bring them the travel journal so that you can have all that information documented in one place.

My friend Dana, may try to find a nanny to care for her daughter when she returns to work.  So her kit can stay at her home and be used by the nanny to guide her daughter through development and the travel journal can be used to keep Dana informed.

If you want to read more Mother Goose Time wrote a quick tour post on their blog which you can check out here.

Now what?

If having this knowledge and step by step guide through infant development sounds amazing to you, like it does to me, get yourself a box.  If you have a little one, buy one for yourself.  If not get one for a friend who is soon to have a baby in their lives.  This would make a spectacular and unique baby shower gift.  You can also subscribe if you want a new box coming each month.  

I get no commission for saying this.  I am just passionate about it.  The knowledge and experiences you receive with this kit are priceless, so much more valuable than anything else you could buy. 

Muscle Mover Cards by Fundanoodle

We got an opportunity to try out a few products from Fundanoodle.  I had never heard of this company before, but along with the learning tools, Heidi sent me a small catalog with more about the company.

"Fundanoodle is an education readiness program designed by pediatric occupational therapists and elementary school teachers to develop and improve the motor skills needed for success in and out of the classroom."

This company is a direct sales company that has "Education Ambassadors" who host parties and share these products with others.  From what I can tell though, the Education Ambassadors, are not about making money but more about sharing their passion.  They have a love for teaching and love to share tools that really make an impact.

Another section of the catalog explains that their products are designed to combat the negative impact of touchscreen technology.

When I read that part of their goal, their products made a lot of sense.  It's too easy to put your child in front of a tablet for entertainment, but it's not as easy to grab something else for them to do, that's where these products come into play.  The first learning tool we tried was the Muscle Mover Cards.

What's included.  

This is how the set arrives.

 Open it up to see the beautiful cards.  They have great graphics, which I love.

 Lift out the cards and you see the ring and dry erase pen in the bottom.

On the lid of the box there are "how to play" and "how to win" instructions.

Then they list the benefits of this type of play, which is great.  It's always nice to know all that can be learned from play.

 This set of cards are all capital letters and are recommended for the younger age group 4 to 5.  The lower case letters are meant for kids age 5 to 6.  There is a debate among educators about whether a child should learn lower case or upper case letters first.  If you believe lower case first is best, you could of course purchase the other set.  I am going to be trying these out on my 3 year old.

Each card has a great animal graphic and a statement of a movement to make and on the backside they have the letter to trace.  I did a little digging into their methods of teaching writing and this helped me understand the green and red lines.  Green for go, which also means it's the typical place where the formation of most letters start.  Red means stop, which is the typical place where letters end.  I personally think this concept is brilliant and so simple.

 The cards are nice and thick, very durable.

 Muscle Mover Cards in Action

I did not read the instructions on how to play the game that was on the box, I was just too excited to give them to Adam to see what he would do with them.  Adam is 3 and this is how we explored the cards.  I first flipped to letter A, the writing side and laid it on the table while it was still attached to the ring.  It did not lay flat so I quickly took it off the ring and laid it right on the table.  I told Adam to start at the green line and follow the grey line all the way down to the red.  He really wanted to follow the green line first and then the grey.  All writing practice is good, so I wasn't bothered.

He did a great job the very first time.  Better than he had followed a line on previous paper and pencil writing opportunities.  I showed him the other, super exciting part, of his special new pen - the eraser.  He got right to work wiping it clean so he could do it again.

After he got some pen on the table I decided to put the letter card on a tray.  It would easily wipe off the table, but I thought this might contain his exuberant writing.

 Here he is at his second attempt.  The first time he tried to follow the line his mark was a bit squiggly.  This one was perfectly straight.

 He also admired his work.

 I coached him to do the other big line and then the little one in the middle.

Now you may think that I chose A because it was the first letter in the alphabet, but it was actually because his name starts with A.  I think it's best for little ones to learn "their" letter first.  But since he mastered that pretty quickly we moved onto B, because it has curvy lines.  Look at him go!

 Next I pulled out C but first I sang "A,B long pause".  He finished the song for me.

 He sat there, writing and erasing for 15 minutes.

 Even with distractions like big brothers and friends in the background.  Adam is only 3 but he has a great pencil grasp.  If you have a younger one that doesn't quite have this skill down, Heidi, the Fundanoodle Education Ambassador recommended forming the letters with play-doh or wiki sticks.  Both are great options.  But they could also simply trace with the tip of their finger.

 I think Adam would say, he enjoyed it.

We haven't even used the movement recommendation on the front of these cards and we already had a tons of fun.

How to use this tool.

Every home with young children needs flashcards of some sort, with all the letters of the alphabet.  Yes you can pick up a set at Dollar Tree.  But the durability of these Muscle Mover Cards, the writing opportunity and the movement recommendations make these cards have a lot more versatility.  These cards would quickly give you ideas on how to spend quality time with your children while they also build fine and gross motor skills.  And I know I said it once before, the graphics are very cute.

As most of you know, we LOVE our Mother Goose Time curriculum, which is an all inclusive ,preschool and beyond, themed curriculum.  Each month with Mother Goose Time we focus on three letters.  We learn their sounds and have the opportunity to practice writing those letters in the My Little Journal.  This set, would go along very nicely with MGT.  Since you get only three alphabet cards each month, collecting all letters by the end of the year, this would be a great way to have the complete alphabet in cards as a part of you classroom all year long.  But it could also coordinate well with the MGT lessons because you could pull out the three letters you are focusing on each month and have a writing station.  You could use those three actions during all your transition times, etc.

As part of your classroom these Muscle Mover Cards would offer another way of learning handwriting.  Every child learns differently, and if the green means go and red means stop concept clicks with your child there are other products from this company with more writing opportunities.

Pros and Cons

I love the green means go, red means stop way of teaching.  My older boys have really struggled remembering to start letters at the top when writing.  Introducing this early would have been very helpful, but I was still learning as an educator.  Now that I know this is a hard habit to break, I find it all the more valuable to start off right.  Not only that, but from what I have seen of the other writing tools, for older children, they have them practice writing the letters within a square, which was something I loved about Handwriting Without Tears.  

This card set, is not a complete writing curriculum.  It's not going to step by step walk you through how to teach handwriting.  But it's a great tool to have and something else to put in front of your children beside a screen.  

I am a little bummed that when the ring is put through the cards, it will no longer fit inside it's box.  

The flip side of that is that it won't be tucked away and forgotten about.  It could be hung on a hook and visible for your children to grab when they are ready for fun. 

I am also a bit disappointed that you can't leave the cards on the ring when writing.  It didn't take long to get the cards on and off the ring, but it's just another step, when we are often running short on time.  I really can't imagine a better way of storing them though.  If they were in a box they could easily be dumped out and all mixed up.  On the ring, they can easily be grabbed and taken on the go.  You could also easily have your child finger trace or form the letters with wiki sticks while the cards were still on the ring.   

All in all the Muscle Mover Cards are a great little product with lots of versatility that is Adam approved.  To top it all off, they are only $17.99.  So find an Education Ambassador today at Fundanoodle and get your home or your school a set.  

All About Spelling

Why did I start this blog?  Two reasons, one was to document my family and our adventures.  Second, because I am one of those people that just can't stop blabbing about a product that I love.  If I ran into you and I knew you were a homeschooler for instance, you would hear about two things - Mother Goose Time and All About Learning Press and their two series, All About Reading and All About Spelling.

I discovered Mother Goose Time 3 years ago and haven't stopped blabbing.  But I just recently discovered All About Spelling, so let the blabbing begin!!!!

Lachlan, my oldest, is just finishing up first grade as part of a homechool charter school.  We have an educational guide that we get to meet with every two weeks and at one of our meetings we were talking about Lachlan's reading and where we were getting a bit stumped.  She asked me, "what about spelling?"  She thought and I agreed that spelling might fill in the gaps.  I for some reason, did not even think of that!  Probably because I really did not want to add another subject to our routine.  But we did, and I am so thankful.

It arrived and I started working through the set up.  I have to say, many curricula overwhelm me.  From the moment the giant Teacher Guide arrives (Saxon Math, oh my!) I shut down.  Even the Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons made me shut down.  There are just too many pages!!! Finally, with each of those examples I opened the book, started reading, and hey, it wasn't so bad.  But when All About Spelling arrived I sighed, Ah, now that's better.  The guides are thin (phew) and cute (I like that) and broken down into easily to digest sections.  And this all matters because the teacher has to be motivated to teach.

First we set up the letter tiles as magnets and stuck them to our white board. Then I jumped into Step 1 and started putting the rest of the items together as I went.

Here I had the white board out in the backyard in a camp chair with all our other homeschool lessons for the day. 

Each level that they progress through is literally called a step.  Step 1 was all about the first 26 phonograms.  I got out the phonogram cards, held them up and asked them to make the sound that each of the letters make.  If they knew them, they were considered "mastered" and they got to color in the hexagon on the phonogram sheet and put the phonogram card in the mastered file.  They already had many of the consonants mastered, but had some more work to do on the vowels.  Some of that is because All About Learning Press (AALP) teaches more sounds for each letter than I was even aware of.  Like 4 sounds for O.  I don't know how to type in all the symbols or I would type them in here.  But I will show you a picture of the back of the card so you can see how easy they make it for you.  That and they have a free app you can download that gives you the correct sounds, if you are ever not sure. 

Step 2 teaches segmenting, which is just brilliant.  The best way to show you is in a quick video.

As I was revisiting Step 2 in order to make this video, I was reminded that even step 2 was broken into easy to digest parts that we did not move on from until they were mastered.  First we practiced recognizing the first sound of a word and repeating the sound, not the name of the letter.  Then we practiced listening for the last sound in a word.  It was only after those two skills were well practiced and easy for the boys that we moved onto segmenting words with two sounds and then onto words like this with three sounds. 

Step 3 has you start working with the letter tiles and putting them in alphabetical order.

Here we are outside at the picnic table, one doing that Saxon math I was mentioning and one putting the tiles in alphabetic order.

The first 3 steps can be worked on at the same time and a little part of each of the steps are incorporated into your daily routine as you start working through steps 4 through 24.
The routine and rhythm of each day is really what was great for my boys.  The phonograms that were not mastered when we initially went through them were put behind the review divider.  Out of those letters I would pick 4 to work on daily until they were mastered.  Only 4 at a time is an easy to swallow daily lesson.  Once mastered they got to color in that phonograms hexagon and file the card behind the mastered divider.

This is the little recipe box that I got for our cards.  It has both the reading and spelling cards in it.  Super easy to keep the cards organized. 

For my boys there have been two big motivators that are part of this program.  The first is the word "mastered".  They love that word!!! I tell them the goal is to master a phonogram and boom, practice, practice, practice, with out complaint.

Then, to top it off, once it's mastered, they get to color in that hexagon on the progress chart!  I had no idea that a progress chart would be so motivating.  Not only that but it's very visual.  It makes it clear what the goal is that we are working towards and how close they are to accomplishing that goal.

These are all three of our progress charts hanging on the wall.

These first 3 steps were really the foundation that the rest of the lessons are built upon.  This has gotten us to where we are today with spelling words with tiles and spelling words on paper.

In this photo I said the word "bug" and Lachlan segmented it in his head and pulled down the letters that make those sounds to spell the word.  

 I had Peter on the other side of the table and thought I would have him try to write a few of the words on paper.  But he was causing a bit of trouble by tapping the water bottle with the paint brush.  Eventually he wrote three of the spelling words.

Lachlan loves to be creative, like his Mommy, and came up with this photo idea.  So I helped him line up the letters in his hands and snapped a picture. 

 Believe it or not, he is thrilled with his idea. 

At this point Lachlan wanted to be done but there was a few more words to spell.  The next word was the word "sun" so I jested, "don't you want to hold the sun in your hands!"  He was game. 

 This time I got a smile out of him.

Anything that brother does, Adam has to do.  So Lachlan helped him hold a tile in his hand for a picture. 

Adam always likes to get involved.  One time he was adamant that he held the flash cards.

When we started All About Spelling the hope was that it would help with his reading development and it has.  He has been able to sound out more challenging words because he has a deeper understanding of phonograms.  He even spent some time reading our children's dictionary and felt quite accomplished by the fact that he could figure out some big words.  When it comes to reading, confidence is key!

Of course teaching spelling also helps with spelling. :)  Lachlan has really enjoyed writing notes and is getting more and more accurate with his writing.  Here he is writing his end of the year writing example.  He wrote "I HElP Mi Mom" and drew a picture of himself helping me pick things up.  My back was out and I was having him help with a lot of the bending. 

I wrote the team at All About Learning Press with one of my last posts where their curriculum popped up.  I kept blabbing to them about how much I love their curriculum and they told me about an affiliate program.  The links in this post are affiliate links.  If you purchase through the links it will help my family get more of their great stuff!  But everything in this post is authentic, I was writing it before I even knew there was an affiliate program.

Next up, All About Reading . . .