Time to work on colors! There are so many ways to sort and play, but the main point is for you and/or your child to be saying the color names aloud. My son wasn’t a big talker, so just getting the shapes sorted was a fun task for him, too. First gather or make small/flat items you have of each color of the rainbow. (I chose to stay away from shades like teal and coral, for example.) Items can be found or made from about anything – paper, fabric, felt, buttons, lids, etc. These can be sorted into and out of color-labeled plastic bags, and we then stored those in a wipes container. Besides having the small colorful items, you will also need sheets of construction paper, a poster, or some other surface onto which your child can place the small items as he matches the colors. Besides using it for storage, the wipes container is also used for more focused play by dumping in all or some of the items and covering it with the lid. Then he can pull out one random item and place it in the correct spot while saying the color name. Simple and versatile! Here are some photos and description of ways we play our color sorting game:
Around the world, believers are longing for and praying for Bibles – their very own copy. If you are like me, you could walk around your house and gather up 10 Bibles, at least. And with technology, we often don’t use the ones we have, because we can access it on our computers and phones. We don’t memorize it, because we can reach over to a table or bookshelf and look something up. But is that really enough? For my children’s sake, I want to instill the importance of having, reading, memorizing, and following the Word of God. I want them to appreciate the fact that they have the Bible, and I want them to treat it with reverence and love, because it is a precious gift. Corrie ten Boom’s father said to her, “Girl, don’t forget that every word you know by heart is a precious tool that [God] can use through you.”
Here is a game we made up to give us another way to practice phonics. I affectionately call it the “Alphabet Cake Game” because it looks a bit like a cake or brownies if using brown paper, but you can use any paper in any pan and call it what you like. Notice I omitted the letters “X” and “Z”, because of the mathematical logistics of my grid. Also, to reinforce letter recognition, you could use all uppercase letters on one side of the paper and all lowercase letters on the other side. Then you can just flip it over for another game.
“The Rules” are easy. Have your child:
Of course, you can adapt this to fit your child and what you are wanting them learn or practice.
Here is a video of me introducing the game to wiggly Ava. You will see why I suggest sitting at a table or on the floor, but the bed (unlike the rest of the room) happened to be clean at the time! 🙂

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| See how happy she was when I gave it to her? |


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| She’s good. |

Do you have plastic Easter eggs around your house? If so, you can easily turn them into an uppercase-lowercase matching game for the letters of the alphabet! We used letter stickers, but it would have been so much easier if we just used a permanent marker! We put the letters on the “front” and the “back” of the egg, so it would be easier for her to find the letter on the egg without having to continue rolling and rotating them around.All the eggs will store perfectly in a gallon-sized freezer bag. Dump them out, and let your child make the matches. When the eggs are completely matched, see if your child can lay them out in the order they appear in the alphabet. During the game, you can talk about the sound each letter makes.
In preparation for July 4th, I worked with Ava, who is almost 4 years old, for several days on saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Each day I said it once or twice and she said it with me, and then one day she recited it all by herself. Her great-grandpa (WWII veteran) and an elderly gentleman in our neighborhood (also a veteran) are just a couple of the people to whom she has proudly recited the Pledge.
Below is a video of my little patriot saying the Pledge of Allegiance….
