Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Lightning Bug Literacy Creative Explorations Kit Review

Recently I was given the chance to review a fun creative explorations kit from Lightning Bug Literacy.  This blog is about "bright ideas for early learning."   They offer great tips for teaching little ones on their daily blog posts.  The Lightning Bug store has a host of a variety of Creative Explorations Kits all with different themes using the letters of the alphabet.  Each kit has 5 learning activities tied to a focus book. 

We were given the R is for Rainbows kit.  

Our focus book was: 
A Rainbow of My Own
Shrade and I had so much fun exploring rainbows in this unique way.  We were given a little packet with all the materials and great welcoming letter which advised us that the time spent learning is what matters the most!

Before each activity we sat down to read A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman.  My son is fascinated by rainbows and it was a great book for my son to discover the wonder of colors.

Our first activity was to build the letter R with rainbow colored foam shapes.  It was fun to create different combinations of colors.  We also practiced writing R with 3 crayons taped together.  This was a great fine motor skill.





Our next activity was to build a rainbow name puzzle.  Thankfully, Shrade has the exact number of letters as colors of the rainbow.  So I laid out the puzzle pieces and Shrade had to match the correct color square.  Then we put them in order starting with red to purple.  I wrote the letters of his name on each of the squares and we reviewed the letters of his name.  We've been doing this orally for awhile, but it was a great way for him to visually see his name.  I could think of several other great ideas for playing with this activity, but that will have to wait!



Another activity was making the Rainbow Streamer.  I asked Shrade to hand me the different colored ribbon as I tied it to the paper plate.  He was right on!  Then we played with the streamer while using an action cube that gave us different motions to do like hop on one foot.  Shrade was more interested in throwing the cube than anything else, but he did do a few hops here and there!





This bonus activity was probably Shrade's favorite.  He had to match colored happy face stickers to spaces on a rainbow page.  I did this activity with him and then when all the spaces were filled I just let him do the rest by himself.  I was completely shocked when he matched up the rest of the stickers to the appropriate color!  I need to get more of these stickers.  :)


Look what Shrade did all by himself!
Our last activity was working with numbers on a rainbow mat.  I put a number card on one side of the rainbow on the cloud and Shrade was to color the correct number of dots on the other cloud on the other side of the rainbow.  We only did 1, 2 and 3.  Then Shrade wanted to match the number cards with the same colors.



This was such a fun review and we can do these activities over and over.

Thank you so much to Lightning Bug Literacy for allowing me the chance to try out their fun learning kit!

Be sure to stop by and visit their Facebook page for up to date blog postings and giveaways.
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PS.  A  Bug Club Membership gives you access to a special weekly newsletter, free printables, savings on Creative Explorations kits and a free gift for your child's birthday.

Stay tuned for great giveaway I have coming  SOON from Lightning Bug Literacy for a Zoo Printable extension set!

1 comment:

Annette @ Live, Learn, Love said...

I especially liked the name puzzle! They all looked fun though!