I took Cub’s train table and made one of the reversible sides a magnetic white board. The short story is that I gave us a table to write on so that we could get into math a little easier. That’s what we’re using it for right now… that, plus magnetic toys work well on it!
First I wanted to say that I hate that my son loses any swimming ability every year. I wish we had the opportunity to keep swimming year round. But really we only go a few times a year. Oh well.
I also notice that regression happens in other areas. So at 4 we make sure what we cycle through things frequently. Be is general knowledge, or math. Especially math.
How is the laminate to write on and erase? How durable is it if something somewhat sharp, like the side of a train hit it with force?
We actually have a trunk that is able to be drawn on and is magnetic. It have provided us with many hours of math play. I also was able to find a $7 tray at ikea what we used for years too.
Many of the early reading books that we read back in the 2 year old days were also visually distracting. However I was able to create a fold over paper thing to cover the pictures but leave the words visible. The picture reveal at the end of reading the pages was a great bonus.
Peter Rabbit books were great at that point also. There was a challenge and the words were all on one side. Once he could read many of the Peter Rabbit books we were pretty good to tackle anything.
Oh and as pedaling!
James never pedaled a bike until after his third birthday. He had no idea what to do. So my dad used some wooden blocks to place the training wheels on. This elevated the back wheel just enough so that he could pedal and not go anywhere. Within a few days he had it down pat.
That’s a great idea on the stationary peddling! I think I’ll give that a shot.
As for the GoWrite! roll’s durability, it’s a bit stronger than paper due to the laminate. A stronger solution would be to laminate your own sheet with a thicker laminate.
I didn’t mention this in the post, but a valid method is to use magnetic primer and dry erase paint. The costs would be about the same, but I opted for the method I did for cleanliness and speed of the project. I didn’t like the idea of painting six coats
I have all the peter rabbit books (used them for making the table actually, though they don’t weigh much lol). I will give them a try as well
OK, Pokerdad, you’ve either made me really jealous or inspired me to get with the program. If you remember, your Cub and my Sara were born within 6 weeks of each other, but your Cub is doing what my four year old is up to right now. This last pregnancy hit me hard and we got really behind. But now I’m inspired to get to work again! I had thought that a whole presentation of reading bear was too long for my girls and only did five words a day. After reading your post, they each did a full presentation today with no problem. I’m excited! Thanks for the inspiration!
If I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about “getting behind” as long as you’re always making some forward progress.
I doubt you could overdo readingbear. As EL goes, I think I’d rank it at the very top of all products available to a parent… and wow, it’s free. You might have to explain a word or concept every now and then, but even if you did nothing, it’s really well done and will accomplish what you want it to.
The longest presentation on there is maybe 20 minutes, and by the time you get to it, your kids will be acclimated to it and probably won’t think too much of it. I certainly think you can do far more than 5 words. Remember that the beauty of Rudolph Flesch was that the words were presented in pattern clusters. It’s really easy to notice a pattern when you get 10 or more examples thrown at you quickly; especially at this young of an age when they’re really picking up language naturally. At least, that’s my opinion
I haven’t done this yet. I have been thinking about it since you mentioned it.
Why not just paint the sheet metal white and draw on top of it? It will eventually get discolored but so does a white board. Just do a spray paint touch up and you are done. Just asking because maybe I haven’t thought it through well enough. I love the table idea and we have a huge train table 5’ x 2’ so we can get a couple kids going on there at once. I want to be able to remove it for use with a train.
I think if I were to do it over again, I’d opt for paint. Rustoleum sells dry erase paint, which I’m guessing (but not sure) would work better than just regular paint. They also have a “magnetic” primer (it has small pieces of iron in it) but I think the primer takes a delicate touch and a lot of mixing to get it right. A sheet of metal will get the job done. Either will work, I just didn’t want to paint and wait a week at the time I took on the project.
If you’re not trying to go magnetic, you can make it easy by buying melamine. I have some in my garage, it was my first choice but then I decided to go magnetic.
Maybe regular paint would work? I don’t know, but perhaps someone out there has tried it and posted about it on the internet
Doodle track car looks interesting! I’m going to look into that
Thanks for the update Pokerdad! As always, an insightful read. It is wonderful to see Cub progressing so well.
We found a dual purpose surface very handy. Our hack was to tape a magnetic dry erase board over a small table (picture attached for those looking for ideas).
Not really a train table, but it is what we have. A rhino lined metal trunk. It is magnetic all the way around. And the yes, it can be used as a whiteboard.
These are the super heavy duty trunks that James may one day lug off to college. Not the flimsy ones from Walmart or the Container store that fall apart. I can stand on these and 2 adults can sit on them. Hence the prices. I was able to get two of them heavily discounted as they were blemished. Not that I ever found the blemishes.
I built a little RGB light box for Cub’s Christmas. It seems the timing is perfect, because lately he has requested a lot of videos on colors and specifically the color wheel. Before I finished the light box, he started to take his Picasso tiles and stack two colors together and look through them at the light to see what color they made.
Now he can do all that and more with a touch of a button.
His favorite was when I took out a yellow highlighter pen, drew a happy face on the back of his hand, asked him what it was (he stayed silent, probably because he didn’t know) and then I introduced him to the black light setting on his remote control to the box. Once he saw the happy face, he was SOLD. Now the black light is his favorite setting lol
Bravo PokerDad and PokerCub! Glad to see an update and its always fantastic to hear that someone is being rewarded for persevering through the “slogs”!
I was doing my usual “click through” of EL, parenting and multilingual family blogs and was sad to see that no one from the EL circuit had updated in a long time (and some blogs have even been taken down) so I’m double excited to read your update.
I hope that your plans for the next year go well, it sounds like you have some exciting ambitions in place.
this is a great and thorough update! Thanks for your honesty. His reading seems to be great. To be honest, I think even if you had achieved nothing else in the time, the fact he went through the reading bear program and can read if he wants to is a fantastic achievement at that age! I hear you about the music. We didn’t even finish Little Musician, we just lack consistency. We are based in a big city that offers plenty of high quality early music classes though, so we are very lucky in that respect. I’ve been meaning to post an update on my little ones for a long time, I think you inspired me to finally update my blog as well!
