These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things...

  

    I keep referring to our dry erase boards. They are not just run of the mill dry-erase boards though. They are THE BEST DRY-ERASE BOARDS EVER!!!! If you want one or 10 for yourself the product is called The Crayola Dry-Erase Activity Center. BTW, I have absolutely no affiliation with Crayola! They have not given me a penny to say any of these things. I am a humble homeschool Mom who found a product I LOVE so much that I can't keep it to myself. So, please allow me to introduce you to the Crayola Activity Center....   

     Both of my boys have their own in their favorite color. Each one came with 4 markers and an eraser. Inside there are laminate templates, alphabet and numbers for tracing, a grid, a map. There are also games like tic-tac-toe, dots and boxes, guess the word, (which is like hangman but with a  pie wheel and you color in the slices).  The templates slide in under a clear window that the kids write on. 

      My Mom got the boards last year. We had driven from sunny Florida to frigid Rhode Island in the winter to visit my family. Then Grammy gave us all strep throat. :-) I guess the activity centers were a consolation prize. LOL.              Actually, she was planning ahead for the car ride home. Having made the trip herself with 2 bored and fussy kids in the back seat a few dozen times before, she knew we would all need some entertainment. It took 20 hours but the kids had a great time doodling and tracing almost the whole way home. Skittles and I wrote notes to each other.                                                                    

      After we got home I had no idea how great the boards would be for homeschooling! I have used the templates for countless activities. We used the grid for letter and number formation. We have also used it to make math tables. We used the alphabet template to write words in alphabetical order. 

     Sometimes I slide a worksheet in under the window. The kids can work out the worksheet over and over again until they are comfortable with the subject. This is especially helpful for my Twizzler. He thrives on repetition. He loves to trace the alphabet and numbers. 

    I have my own large dry erase board that I use daily to write out important parts of our lessons. Now my boys pull out there dry erase boards too and copy what I am writing. It makes our lessons feel less like a lecture and more like a group project. They absorb all the information a whole lot better when they are active participants. 

     We have been using the boards for a year now and somehow the novelty has not worn out! We LOVE these boards! There is only one thing I would change about them..... If only they were magnetic too!!!! 

     Well that is it for my first edition of These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things... I plan on sharing more with you from time to time.. I want to reiterate that I am not being paid by Crayola or any one else to give a positive review.  I am just a happy customer.