Activities when having kids of different ages
When you have children of different ages, with various learning styles, and attention spans shorter than a pinky nail, you have to be creative in order to keep all the children entertained as well as keep their minds engaged.
One activity I like to do is a race to find the card. This is where I lay picture cards with words or letter/number/color/shape cards down on the floor spread out. If I have a child who is 2 and under, I will tell them to run and grab me the card with a heart or grab me the color yellow or even grab me the card with the picture of a car on it.
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For the child that is 3-5, I will ask them to grab me the card with the car and tell me the letters they see on it or grab me the number 5 or even grab the card with the heart shape and tell me what color it is.
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For the child that is over 5, I will have them race to get me the card with the picture of the car, then ask them to spell CAR from memory. Or to grab the number 3 and grab the number 5 and add them together.
Just a few things to get them familiar with age appropriate things they would learn at school or even ahead of the game. Of course, with the game, there MUST be prizes. Well, not all the time, but it is encouraging. It may involve choosing their snack for the evening, winning a piece of candy occasionally, or even earning tv/movie/computer time.
Writing is also big in our home. Everyone practices writing their name, letters, numbers, and for the older kids, writing words/sentences. For my Pre-K guy, we are working on distinguishing uppercase & lowercase. We are also working on sight words. It is beneficial to have kids learn to spell what they want or where they are going and definitely what their phone number is. That was one of our biggest dilemmas when we got rid of the house phone. Since we live in a cellular world, which number do they learn? mommy's? daddy's? grandma's? For our kids, they learn both mommy's and daddy's as their own. And the funny video below shows that they even learned Charter Spectrum's number one year lol.