Thinking Thursday-a little research and a parking lot!

We kicked off our first Thinking Thursday with an activity we had already made a couple weeks ago. My sister, and Pinterest, gave me this idea so I can't take full credit! ;)

Parking Lot for Sight Words!

 Materials

Recycled pizza box

Matchbox cars

Sharpie

Masking Tapes

"Little Car lovers"

I just used a Sharpie to draw "parking spaces" for the words. Then add masking tape with matching words on the cars.

Even though she is not reading quite yet, she can still match the words on the cars to the right spaces. The first time we did this it took her a little time and problem-solving. She had to turn the car different directions to make a match. 

Today, when we played again, she was much quicker!

She would recognize the first letter and match that first. Sometimes she would need a little prompting to check if it was the right spot. But overall, she did great. I would say the words as she chose a car and had her "read" it too before placing in the right spot. 

Got them all!

The extension to this is easy! I plan to take the tape off the cars and then just call a word out to her to recognize and read before she places the cars. Fun!

We also made one for Noah but he's not quite ready for it yet. His is modified to be just a few letters and numbers 1-10. I plan to add tape to the cars when I see he's more interested in it. 

I decided to add the dots on the numbers to help with counting? We will see. He really loves driving the cars into the spaces he chooses for now. :)

Myla decided to try out Noah's Parking Lot....I called out the letter or number and she would park the car in the right spot. It was too easy for her but love how it builds her confidence. :)

Thinking Thursday Part 2!

Last week, I was reading this book to the kids, What If You Had Animal Hair?, and we came across a very interesting animal that we had never seen before...the Star-Nosed Mole. Ever heard of it??

Such a silly looking animal and Myla had tons of questions about it, which I couldn't answer! 

So we have saved our research for Thinking Thursday. ;)

First we looked at images on the iPad of star-nosed moles. Then I asked her to think of 3 questions to research. Here they are....

We watched 2 videos from Animal Planet's website and found our 2 of our answers pretty quickly!

We found out what they use their strange-looking nose for and also what they eat. 

Here, M is writing "Bugs"

The only answer that wasn't clear was what they use their claws for??

I asked Myla what she thought and she said, "To DIG!"

In case you are just dying to know the answers we found..

They have 22 tentacles on their nose and that helps them sense and capture their prey.

They eat worms and insects.

 Here she tells you all about what she learned! Way to go, My!