Our friends at BOB Books sent us two sets of books to review- My First BOB Books: Pre-reading Skills and My First BOB Books: Alphabet. We have been reading them a lot over the past few weeks and carrying them around with us too (in the car, to church, to doctor's appointments, etc.).
Today I wanted to share a fun name shape craft that we did in addition to sharing some of our favorite things about these two My First BOB Books sets.
As we started this activity we read a few of our favorite books in the BOB Books: Pre-Reading Skills set.
This set introduces kids to shapes in an entertaining and fun way. My son really liked the characters (some have siblings in some of the other BOB books). Each character is a different shape and likes to eat or play with objects that are the same shape that they are. For example, Sally the Circle has circle curls in her hair.
We also liked how the characters in the books did activities that we could relate to and my son loved how some of the stories had problems that he needed to solve. For example, in one story the drum is broken and he has to guess what shape would be needed to fix it. He was so proud of himself when he got the right answer!
After we read some stories about shapes, we created our own...
Materials Needed: colored tissue paper, alphabet letter stickers, scissors, contact paper, colored paper, marker, ribbon, tape, and a ornament/ball template (or you can make your own).
Directions:
1. Snip lots of different shapes using your scissors and tissue paper. Some of ours looked like real shapes... some didn't. We talked about number of sides, colors of tissue paper, and the sizes of our shapes.
2. Draw circles on the non-sticky side of the contact paper. Tape them sticky side up onto a table or piece of paper.
3. Start sticking your snips to the contact paper.
We managed to snag my husband and get him to come create with us. He said this was the craftiest he's been in probably 20 years... he rolled his eyes when I told him what we were doing, but then he totally spent way longer working on his ornaments than my son and I put together! I think he secretly loved it.
You can make your snips lie flat or be textured. My son was all about rolling his tissue up into little circles- like Sally!
My husband was purest and wanted everything flat!
4. Once done, cover the sticky side with white paper or another piece of contact paper to make your ornament. Covering it with contact paper will make it more see-through than we madeours, like these ornaments from 1-2-3 Learn Curriculum that were our inspiration for this project.
5. Cut around the circles.
6. Cut out an ornament template that is a bit larger than the circles. Trace it onto several colors. I will scan mine and add it to this post tomorrow for those of you who might want to use it. Then draw any extra details.
7. Have your child search through letter stickers to find the letters in his name. Or you can make a big class banner that says "Happy Holidays" and have each child be in charge of searching for just one letter. Stick one letter to each ornament.
8. Now do a little alphabet reading as you talk about your child's name and look at the letters.
My First BOB Books: Alphabet has 12 books and as you read the books each of the 26 letters of the alphabet are introduced. They introduce the capital and lowercase versions of the letters and then show some simple words that start with those letters. As each book progresses, the sentences become more complex and descriptive and introduce more words that start with the focus letters for the book.
When we did this activity we read the books that corresponded to the letters in my son's names. He loved making the connection with the book and animals/objects in the book... and recognizing that the letters in his name were other places too!
9. Tape the name circles onto the ornament backs and then glue or tape some ribbon on to hang your ornaments.
10. Have your child spell his name and hang the ornaments somewhere where he can see them often!
You can also talk about the letters and hunt around the house for other objects that also start with the letters while you're reading the books.
After spending a lot of time with these books over the past few weeks, I have to say that the My First BOB Books series is one of my favorites. These were designed as read-aloud stories and my little guy loved to listen to me read and then liked pointing out letters and words that he knew as we read. He also liked hunting for shapes, looking for patterns, and talking about the stories. They were easy for him to follow and silly- which kept his attention. We could never stop after reading just one. If we sat down to read, the only time we got to be done was when we made it through the entire set or the baby had ripped the book out of our hands.
When our friends at BOB books approached me about reviewing some products I had only been aware of the BOB books sets for older kids. When I discovered these pre-reading books on the website I was really excited to try them out.
They exceeded my expectations. I highly recommend them. We love how portable they are and how durable the little box is too. My son really likes carrying them with us to church or taking them around the house with him. Right now they are all scattered on top of his reading corner chair so that his little sister won't take them.
I highly recommend you check out these products... and if you have the inclination, try making some snipping name ornaments while you read them. 🙂
We have a BOB Books giveaway coming up on Thursday as part of our Holiday Giveaway Season... so who knows? Maybe you'll get a free copy of one of these sets? Stay tuned!
Disclaimer: Once again we'd like to thank our friends at BOB books for providing us a free BOB Books: Pre-Reading Skills set and Alphabet set to explore. We were not compensated for this review and all opinions shared in this post are 100% mine. Please note that your opinions may differ from those of my family. Stay tuned for our BOB Books giveaway on Thursday!
I was looking for it also
Did you ever scan in the ornament template? I can't seem to find the link. Love your blog. Thanks for the wonderful ideas!!
What a cute craft idea. I wonder if my 2 year old would do well with this yet? She is getting to the age of learning these things. Thanks for sharing on Monday Madness.
Nope I didn't! I need to add that to my to do list.
Love this crafty idea!
Oooh! Thanks for the heads up on the giveaway. I used these some when I taught first grade but I hadn't seen the prereader series. That's great! I love the ornaments too. I'm going to pin those! Thanks for sharing.