Toolbox: Skill Building at Home

Does your child crave repetition? If they are anything like mine, your kids love to repeat words and actions over and over again. I take advantage of this by incorporating a few skill builders into our daily routine. After breakfast is over my son expects to go do calendar and weather and he looks forward to this special time each morning. If I get busy and forget he is quick to remind me that it is calendar time!

Here is our activity wall:

Weather Words -The first section is dedicated to weather. I found a weather kit from my local Dollar Tree. It included two big cards that say “Today’s Weather Is” and “Tommorrow’s Weather Will Be” and each has built in slots to insert the appropriate Weather Word. The weather cards each have a photo to correspond to the word to aid young children in reading the words. Weather words that were included in the pack are Rainy, Sunny, Snowy, Windy, Cloudy and Partly Cloudy. When they are not in use, Weather Words are stored in the big envelope.

I usually pull out the words and we go to the window to decide what the weather is for the day. I ask my son questions like, “Is it snowy today?” or “Is it windy today” until he decides on the appropriate Weather Word for the day. After that I ask him what he thinks it will be tomorrow and he picks a Weather Word for the next day as well. When tomorrow comes I can then ask him if his guess was correct. If your child is older, you may have them look at the news or the newspaper forecast to see what the predicted weather will be tomorrow.

I would suggest that you purchase two kits rather than just one. Each kit comes with only one each of the Weather Words so if you have rain for two days, you need two rain cards. These kits retail for a dollar. If you don’t have a local dollar tree in your area, a school supply may have what you need, but at a higher price. You could also make your own Weather Kit with poster board and colored marking pens.

Calendar- Another Dollar Tree find, this calendar has stickers for all the numbers plus little stickers to add to the pages. It also has coloring pages at the top for children to color in. The calendar is a little small, and the squares are so small that it is hard to write much in them, but it is working out for now.

When we do calendar time, I help my son point and we say “Today is Friday, April 3, 2009, Yesterday was Thursday, April 2, 2009, Tommorrow will be Saturday, April 4, 2009.” If there is an event that we are excited about we count how many days until the special day. After that we sing a song. I wish I knew the tune but it goes, “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then we start again.” We do that while pointing to the appropriate squares on the calendar. We conclude by getting a sticker and adding it to the calendar. Toddlers love stickers!

Stop Light- This is a basic behavior modification tool. I think kids like to have visual reminders of how they are doing and a stoplight works well for this. We start each day with a green light (or a fresh slate) and we hope our light stays green. When we have misbehavior we warn that we have to change to a yellow light. If the behavior improves we can go back to green. If things really get bad we get a red light. This technique is really new for us, but as we use it, my husband and I will come up clearly defined consequences for each of the “lights”. For instance, if he gets a yellow light he may need to spend 5 minutes quietly in his room. He could earn a green light back by being nice and helping mommy with a chore.

I made this tool by using construction paper, clear contact paper, and hook and loop adhesive tabs that can be found at a craft/sewing store. I will give complete directions for this tool in next week in the Friday Toolbox.

Other possibilities-These are just a few skill building ideas. Other possibilities include chore charts, saving money, learning to tell time, and more.

What kind of skill builders do you have in your toolbox?

Up tomorrow:
Weekend Chat: How do you Get Involved In Your Community?