Folder Fun

This morning's post is by a friend of mine, Stephanie.  She writes two blogs, and has been a huge encouraging force in my own!  Stephanie was a fellow elementary / special ed major at TTU with me, and we dated and married our husbands at around the same time.  I love (and am humbled by) her amazing mercy heart.  She just made the choice to stay home and home school her kids, stepping down from teaching special ed in a public school.  Her ideas for home educational activities are amazing, and I recommend you check out her blog!  She has written a great guest post about 'folder work'.

filefolderfun.com
- awesome site for pre-made activities

File folder games are great for all abilities and ages. The are customizable to whatever you are learning about and whatever skill level your child or student is at.

So far we have:
-3 addition file folders
-lowercase/uppercase matching game
-matching colors
-sorting hot/cold
-sorting even/odd
-matching sound to letter
-prepositions
-biggest to smallest

In the works:
-put your name in order for the 2 year old
-matching numeral and number work
-matching amount to number
-matching basic words to pictures

The possibilities are endless. It doesn't take much to whip up vocabulary and spelling folders. It would also be easy to label things like the body, insets, spiders, whatever you are working on. Any type of sorting activities (vowels/consonants, 5 senses, animal kingdom) would be simple to put together.

The only downside is that they are a little time consuming to make, but they last for a while.

Some tips:
-if you can afford it, have them laminated. I used contact paper. It takes a little more time.
-velcro dots. Cutting and peeling off the backing of strip velcro is annoying. If you peel a big piece and cut, you end up with stick scissors.
-make one set of numbers and letters. You can use them for multiple games.
-I store my pieces in an envelope taped to the folder

Here is my 2 year old matching his colors:



In this game, I would tell him various prepositions and he would put the dinosaur there. To make it, I glued a flap down using a piece of card stock. Then, I put contact paper over the folder and used an exacto knife to slice through the contact paper.





Here he is ordering smallest to biggest.



And finally sorting hot and cold.



Here is my 5 year old matching upper and lowercase letters.



All done!



Here she is matching letter to the beginning sound. Note the same letters from the previous game.

From 2011-08-29

Here is my 6 year old working on his addition facts. This is a lot more fun than calling out math facts. He was very excited that he didn't have to write all of his answers down.



He told me he was mediating to find the answers. Who knows? You can see his fingers out, counting. I told him we would keep practicing each folder until he could do them quickly.



Here he is sorting even and odd numbers. This was a new concept for him, so we kept out the 100 chart. He caught on quickly.



Folder games take a little work to get started, but you can't beat the variety. It's a great way to get worksheet practice in with out having an actual worksheet.