Kids Craft: word ping pong

I'm BACK!!! After a long trip with lots of stops I am finally back to blogger land and itching to get going on my long list of crafts and projects that has grown over the last month. Our trip included stops in Newport Beach, California, Seattle, Washington, and Mesa, AZ. 3 long car trips, 2 short plane rides, and more family members than I can count. Two kids and 1 very pregnant mom touring the west coast; needless to say after being away from home for over a month we are glad to be back.

And with most of the summer behind us it is time to start thinking about back to school projects, Halloween costumes, and a lot of new baby ideas. It will be a very busy two months and I am excited to get started.

The kid's craft I worked on this week is a back to school idea that I found on Pinterest. My son who is now 4 is very stubborn. He will only work on school related projects if he thinks he is in charge. He is a very visual learner as well. Great with shapes and colors, not so good at numbers and letters. We are working on recognizing letters of the alphabet, but reading alphabet books is not enough. Enter short word ping pong balls.

I bought a pack of 30 ping pong balls and wrote basic words in black marker. I found this great list of 100 basic sight words all kindergarteners should know. We started with 30 of the smallest words and will work our way up over the next year. Basically I throw or roll the ping pong ball to him, he reads the word and throws one to me. Sometimes I will ask him to pick out a word that I say to him and he has to find that word and throw it back to me. It is a start, and so far he likes the game. Hopefully it will continue and he will not get bored. Fingers crossed.