Manic/Made It Monday!

I am linking up again with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made It.

I saw this pin last week from Pre-K Pages and knew I wanted to do something like it with my little learners.

Many of my sweeties are just working on name recognition at the beginning of the year and most don't know the letters in their name.  We work on putting the letters of our names in order a lot!  So I headed out to look for pool noodles {not such an easy feat since many stores are moving from summer items to school supplies}.  I found some, but had to go to more than one store to get different colors.

I happened to have these, but you could use index cards, cut up sentence strips, etc.

I followed the instructions from Pre-K Pages and cut the pool noodle to the desired length and then cut it in half.

I then cut a slit on the rounded top, leaving about 2" at each end uncut.

I wrote a letter of my name on separate cards.  

For my sweeties who don't know how to spell their names yet, I provide a visual by writing their names on a sentence strip.  They will then match the letters and insert the cards in the slit in order at the top of the noodle.  Ta da!

I then began thinking about other things to do with the pool noodles.  Of course, they would be great fine motor practice to string.  To add more of a challenge, little ones could make a pattern. 

I came up with this simple patterning page.  Little ones can string a pattern and then color the pattern on the page.  

If you would like a copy of the patterning page, click HERE

Thanks for reading!  Have a great day.  :)