Who are you Thankful for?

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, we have been working on recognizing family faces (and names)! This is something you can do at home, and doesn't take much time or effort. We have these fancy store bought cubes:

Fancy picture cubes from Discount School Supply

They are marketed towards infants.... but I can tell you that my boys are 14 months old, and still love them! Each cube comes with a mirror and has 5 slots for pictures. You can put anything in there! We have pictures in ours at the moment. We roll them, find the person I am asking for, and then someone will find the mirror and stare at themselves in it for quite a while..... I'm sure our family can guess who that is!

But I also plan on putting animal flash cards in them, and practice animal sounds/identifying. I saw the Eric Carle Animal Cards at Anthropologie a few weeks ago, but I know you can get similar ones anywhere or print your own!  Then when they get bigger, alphabet picture cards and work on sounds/letter recognition... I mean the uses are endless. One day I'll be tossing the cube and there will be addition facts in there! 

Oh but wait, you say you don't have fancy picture cubes??? Not to worry. Here is a quick way to make your own! Remember learning is about the process, not the product!

Supplies:

Shoe boxes ( I have an abundance of little people shoe boxes, but use whatever size you have.)

Tape or glue

Wrapping Paper (Optional)

Pictures

Sharpie

I have twins, I mentioned that right??  Ha, I think I am really funny, sorry. Here is the simple, fast, your kids are screaming at your feet and you need something quick way to make your own:

Step 1: Tape the lid on your shoe box.

Step 2 and 3: Tape the pictures on and label them.

Teacher tip for the day: Write how you see it in real books!

Capital letter followed by lowercase letters.

I can not tell you how hard it is to break the all caps writing from 5 year olds!

 Fancy, crafty, kids are napping shoe box:

Throw some wrapping paper over it.

 And if you are really fancy... type up the words!

My sister used call me and tell me her kids said they were thankful for me at bed time, it would melt my heart. So each night, before bed and with our prayers, we say who we are thankful for and who we love. We have a really long list. Some nights my husband and I are standing in a dark room over the cribs for a very long time!

Happy Almost Thanksgiving!