Rusty and Rosy Learn with Me Blog

As your child has a variety of experiences in her preschool program comparing living and nonliving things, she will come to see that “life” is more than movement; she will begin to incorporate other concepts such as eating, breathing and growth.
With your child, look through old magazines and newspapers for pictures of living things such […]

Now that your preschooler has become adept at rhyming through the activities we’ve posted over the last weeks (Read a Rhyme, Change the Rhyme, Rhyming Riddles, Rhyming Bingo, and Rhyming Concentration), here’s a fun capstone game to share with the family. Once again, this is a great activity for older siblings to share—especially if you […]

As children become familiar with shape, location, and transformations they develop spatial reasoning which helps them understand the world around them. This activity focuses on building vocabulary that describes location.
Choose a visible object in the room. Give a clue about the item using a position word like front, middle, back, over, under, top, behind, beside, […]

This is another fun game to share with family members, especially for home schoolers. First, you’ll need to print and cut out the Sound Sense Playing Cards. You can also copy them on card stock and have your child color them. Select three to six pairs of rhyming words from among the cards. Show your […]

Very young children first associate “life” with any object that moves, but living things share many other characteristics. Three of the most readily observed characteristics understood by your preschooler are: living things move on their own, grow and need moisture and nourishment.
Take a walk around your neighborhood or a city park. Keep your eye out […]

If possible, gather a small group of players for this game (with a maximum of eight). This is a fun game to share with the family, especially for home schoolers. Give each player a Sound Sense Bingo Card and some pieces to cover the squares (pennies, buttons, or beans work well.)
Each time you say a […]

As your preschooler or kindergartener becomes familiar with shapes, they lay a foundation for understanding their spatial world and other topics in mathematics, art, science and social studies.
Together, look around the house to find objects that have particular shapes, such as circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles. If you have more than one child that would […]

Your preschooler is pre-wired to explore the world around him using his senses. In fact, it’s so natural to him that he probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. As you share sensory experiences, you’re helping him to think about how he gathers information. This understanding will prepare your buddingscientist to gather information in new […]

Sorting is a surprisingly important math skill. In Helping Children Learn Mathematics, Robert Reys writes that “classification not only helps children make some sense of things around them, but also helps them become flexible thinkers. Classifying objects in different ways fosters the development of thinking skills.” Classification skills are prerequisite to any meaningful number work. […]

Having a “sense” of numbers is critical to your child’s future success in math. You can help your child gain this sense by counting sets and recognizing which set (number) is greater than, less than, or equal to another set (number). Try this coin tossing activity to count and recognize numbers.
Take 3 to 5 clean, […]