Cookie Sheet Activities Review...and Giveaway!!!!

Homeschooling three little girls fills my heart with joy...and sometimes my life with challenges. My biggest challenge is keeping my girls productive and engaged while I'm working individually with one of their sisters. I am fine with letting them play on their own, but really like to keep them in learning-mode as long as possible before we switch to play-mode. My girls get so caught up in their pretend play that pulling them back to focused learning isn't always easy.

This summer I gave in to Pinterest and was soon falling in love with lots of great ideas to keep my girls learning while I was teaching the others! The only problem was how much time each of these great activities took to make. With the school-year already underway, I kept looking and found The Cookie Sheet Challenge over at the Make, Take, and Teach Blog.These engaging activities were the perfect compliment for the educational level of all three of my daughters (Yay!), they were colorful and engaging (Double Yay!!), and already created (Triple Yay!!!). I couldn't wait to try them out!

Volume 3 was a great choice for Beth (Kindergarten) and Rose (2nd grade). I love that there is more than one activity included in each challenge set! There was something for both girls. Even Grace (K-3) could enjoy portions of this set. 

Since we already had a large set of magnetic letters, and some extra cookie sheets, all the preparation this took was printing. I prefer to use photo paper for printing activities I know I'm going to reuse. It creates an almost laminated feel and lasts much longer than traditional card stock. I also like the shiny look the pages had. It didn't take long to print the whole set, but there were SO many pages! I didn't realize just how much came with this until it kept printing...and printing...and printing! The girls always know when I'm getting something special ready for them. They were watching the printer as much as I was!

Beth is already an excellent reader. She is also unbelievably creative and loves to make up stories. Building sight words with magnetic letters is a great way to help her start to learn how to transfer all those great ideas from her head on to paper! I was pleased with how quickly she took to this activity and really enjoyed searching for the right letters to create the correct word. There are so many of these pages she won't ever get bored! She was so proud of herself for finding all the right letters.

Another neat aspect to this activity was my youngest daughter was also able to build these words. While she is not yet reading, she is learning her letters. This activity is a great for pre-readers as they begin to recognize letter relationships and how they build words when placed together. (Grace was feeling a little big camera shy this morning, so you'll just have to take my word for it!)

Another activity included in this set is placing the correct site word in each sentence. Included in the set is a page of these words which you cut and place in the squares at the bottom. I cheated :) I already have a magnetic sentence building set which includes all of the typical sight words so I used those. This was a great activity for Rose because she often wants to make up whatever she thinks the word is. she is also an excellent reader and loving books far above her expected reading level, but she likes to read so quickly she often just looks at the first couple of letters and then guesses what will come next. Filling in the words helped her see context and forced her to think about what should be there. This was the first page and they become progressively more difficult. 

Rose really liked this and was so happy she was able to have a fun activity as well! Now I just have to convince Beth she can do this activity just like Rose. She often thinks that because she is younger she has to wait to do the same things as her older sister! This will be a great activity for her as well as she moves towards context word connections. 

So, are you ready to win Cookie Sheet Activities Volume 3: Sight Words!?! There are lots of ways to enter! Don't forget to head over to the Make, Take, and Teach Blog to check out all of her great ideas! Also visit her store at Teachers Pay Teachers to check out Volume 3 which I reviewed,  all 5 Volumes of Cookie Sheet Activities, and many more other learning activities! The giveaway begins October 1st at Midnight and will run until October 8th. 

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*I received Cookie Sheet Challenge 3 for this review