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Try this simple and fun game of sight word swat called, “Splat!”
But first, hear it from this activity mom how she simplifies and stays consistent for activity success!
Anna is an enthusiastic mom of 2. “Charlie is 4, he’ll be five in May. And Mabel is 2.”
After 12 years of teaching kindergarten, Anna extended her maternity leave indefinitely due to the Covid pandemic. However, she still runs a small business on the side which focuses on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) activities for kids.
Consistency is Key
Covid-19 hit just before they had planned to send their son to preschool. Anna figured with her experience and background this would be a no-brainer to do herself at home.
“I was like, I can do preschool at home. I’ve got the background. We were really solid until October. And then my baby at the time became more of a toddler and started moving. And I was like, Oh my gosh, nothing’s getting done. So in October, I joined The Activity Room, because I needed something consistent to just keep us on track.”
“Before The Activity Room, I was incredibly inconsistent. I like to go big or go home more or less. So all of my ideas have to be like these grandiose big plans with all the things and they get a little bit intense. And so then I get really excited and then overwhelmed. And then I stopped doing anything.”
Anna tells us she signed up for a free activity challenge with The Activity Room. She was interested in the Learning Without Worksheets theme and thought it looked like something she could do.
“My biggest problem that I was looking to solve was consistency. I needed something that was right there in front of me, done pretty much for me. That I could just be like, Oh my gosh, yep here’s the calendar. We’re gonna ice skate on paper plates today. Ready? Go!”
Anna was thrilled at the end that she had actually done activities with her kids for 5 days in a row! This was a consistency she really wanted to continue with.
“I did it for five whole days! I was really excited. So I was like, all right, we’re just gonna sign up for a whole year.”
The sight word swat activity at the end is a great example of keeping it simple! You can definitely pull it off.
Download a FREE Sample Week of Activities for Kids Age 2-5 here!
Simplify for Success
“When I first learned about The Activity Room, I was excited for something new, and something simple and easy to follow.”
Anna shared with us how she was stuck in a viscous cycle of doing one big, over-the-top project with her kids. Getting overwhelmed with it. Feeling it wasn’t really worth all the effort, stress and mess. And then not wanting to do another activity for a while.
“Before Room, I always felt like I had to do something really big and elaborate. It had to be. I’m huge into STEM. And so it’s always art and science projects. And I like mess. So the messier they are the better. And I always thought they had to be big. And I didn’t know how to bring it back down and just make it simple and easy. So the kids would get overwhelmed, I would be stressed out about the mess.”
Activity time has become more and more important to Anna and her kids. She tells us she learns so much about her kids while making wonderful memories together.
“I want to do activities with my kids to give us that like connected time. My four year olds’ love language is definitely quality time. And so that just gives us this bonding time that we can be together and it’s productive, it’s not on the TV, and we’re learning. And I learned so much about both of my kids while we’re doing these activities. I’m blown away by the things they can do or how they work together and help each other. It’s fantastic to see who they are.”
Spend some quality time with your kids with a simple sight word swat activity. Anna shares it with you at the end of this post. And you can adapt it so easily for learning anything from colors to math equations!
“I think if we hadn’t joined The Activity Room, we’d probably still be in that cycle of one day we do 10 projects, make this huge mess, it’s a whole day thing, it’s all a little overwhelming, and then we don’t do anything for a week or two weeks. And then we do another big giant thing. And it was an icky cycle that I didn’t really love being in. I feel like now we’re a lot closer and it’s more consistent and we get a lot more out of our time. Even if it’s short, we use our time better.”
A Community of Memory Makers
One thing about joining Room that we hear a lot of positive feedback about is our Members Only Facebook Community.
Anna tells us how other people don’t seem to get it like the members community does. It’s easy to get pegged as ”that mom.” The crafty, sensory or super-star type mom.
But we are all just the average everyday mom trying to create a space for those bonding moments and memory making opportunities at home.
“I really, really enjoyed that there was this Facebook community of like minded people who were posting, sometimes, just the simplest things that they did with their kids. And sometimes these really cool activity twists. And I’ve done so many science and art projects, but there would be one little change to it that I’m like, That’s brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that? And it was that level of excitement and energy that brought it to a whole new level and kept me going with it. Because I can post things to Facebook, and people will be like, oh, yeah, your kids are cute. But they don’t really care that we skated on paper plates today. But when you post in the [Members Only] Facebook group, people are like, that’s amazing! We did that, too. And it’s like this whole different excitement for [your activity.]”
The Facebook community has helped keep Anna going when her motivation and ideas are lacking. The encouragement of the other parents working to create those consistent memories with their kids is priceless to her. And the constant reminder it doesn’t have to be big, complicated, or even an activity win.
“My favorite part of The Activity Room is definitely the Facebook group. Just being a part of that. People want to see what you’re doing. And they want you to post even the most mundane things. The other day, I posted about my two year old helping me fold kitchen towels. And it was something that was super exciting to me because she had so much fun with it. But nobody else would care. And people in The Activity Room group were like, Oh my gosh, that’s so cute. What a great opportunity. And I was like you guys get it.”
“After joining The Activity Room group, I’m definitely not 100% there. But I’m far more consistent and organized. And if I forget to set up an activity or we need something really quick, I love that I have a resource that’s not the black hole of Pinterest. I’m far more consistent as a mom. I’m more present as a mom. And I’m more excited. But in a controlled way that makes things actually get done. Instead of like grandiose excitement that ends with Oh, that was cool, but now I’m overwhelmed. So let’s stop.”
Let’s Meet Anna
How many kids do you have and how old are they?
I have two kiddos. My son is 4 (5 in May) and my daughter is 2.
Why do you love doing activities with your kids?
I love doing activities with my kids because it gives us time to learn together. My husband and I are both former teachers so we like to incorporate a lot of learning at home. Doing activities with our kids makes us all feel more connected and provides quality engagement with one another.
How long have you been in The Activity Room?
October 2020
What is your favorite activity you’ve done in The Activity Room?
Oh gosh, there are so many.
The Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt was amazing! It was so much fun to share how special we are to each other and to see the kids’ faces light up as they read the things we notice about them.
My daughter LOVES the feed the bunny game, as well. We feed a plethora of animals now haha.
Make sure you check out Anna’s own sight word swat activity called SPLAT below!
What’s your favorite thing to do with your kids when you get a few moments?
We are definitely a book reading family so we love to snuggle up and read as many stories as we can.
What’s your best tip for doing activities with your kids?
For me, it’s about keeping things simple. Activities don’t need to be big and elaborate or take a lot of time to set up and implement. Just keep it simple and have fun with it. It’s about connecting with your kids and enjoying time together, not about making things perfect or having an activity turn out a certain way. Just enjoy it.
If you were to tell a friend about The Activity Room, what would you say to them?
The Activity Room is like nothing else. It’s family to me at this point. My Master’s degree is actually in STEM education so I have a lot of background knowledge in how to teach kids and whatnot, but I still struggled with consistency.
I cannot even tell you how many Pinterest boards I have with so many ideas and projects, but we never actually did any of them because they were out of sight, out of mind. Or they took too much time/prep or too many materials that I didn’t have on hand, etc.
Now with The Activity Room I have a calendar with SIMPLE ideas that can be put together quickly and I am so much more consistent. We also have this amazing group full of adults who share their ideas, twists, successes and fails, when things didn’t go as planned. I feel more confident in doing activities regularly, and I feel validated because I have a support system of people who are there to cheer each other on and who will get excited with me when I share something my kids and I did on any given day.
Share your favorite quote
“Play is the highest form of research.” Albert Einstein.
“We do not stop playing because we grow old…we grow old because we stop playing.” George Bernard Shaw
SPLAT! The Sight Word Swat Activity!
This sight word swat activity is called “SPLAT!”
Using notecards, your kids can work on learning sight words, colors, letters, or shapes while having a bunch of swatting activity fun!
To Make Your Own Sight Word Swat Game, You’ll Need:
- Notecards (or cut pieces of paper)
- Markers
- Fly Swatter (Spatula, Paper towel tube, or other swatting tool)
How to Prep SPLAT Sight Word Swat
First grab your swatting tool of choice.
We used fly swatters for our sight word game but you could use spatulas, or even paper towel tubes.
Write one word (or color, shape, letter, etc) on each of about 6 note cards (or post it notes).
Lay them face up on the table.
That’s it! Your all set up.
Before playing sight word swat, we also quickly talked about safety rules:
- We only splat the cards
- We listen and splat only the word that is called out
- We keep the cards on the table
How to Play SPLAT! The Sight Word Swat Activity
Lay the cards face up on the table, spread out a bit.
You call out a sight word (or whatever else you wrote on the cards) and your kiddo “splats” the correct card with the swat tool.
If they splat the correct card, they get to keep the card.
If not then practice finding the correct one.
Then try a different card, and come back to the one they got incorrect.
If my kids are just guessing and splatting anything, they have to put all the cards back in the middle.
If they truly didn’t know one, we practice and they get to try again.
Easily Adapt This Game for Any Age
I’ve typically only done this swat activity with sight word. Specifically when I was teaching kindergarten.
However, when I was teaching my 4 year old how to play, my 2 year old wanted to play with us.
That was when I realized that I could quickly make a version of SPLAT for her!
So, I drew circles of different colors on separate notecards and she practiced colors while her brother swatted sight words.
They both loved it and kept asking to play again and again.
I love it because it is fun and engaging, but also takes very little time to set up.
And you can adapt it for absolutely anything you want to learn.
You can even try a quick math swat for grade schoolers. Just call out simple math equations and have them swat the correct answer.
I was excited to see that my 2 year old also wanted to play.
I had a few extra sight word cards for my 4 year old to swat, but didn’t think he was ready for them yet.
But he saw them and added them to the game.
And boy did he prove me wrong!
My 4 year old brought it to school for show-and-tell so he could teach his friends how to play, too!
I loved seeing what both of my kids were capable of and how much fun they had together.
I was surprised by how easy it was to differentiate for both kids so that we could all play it together even though they are 2 and 4.
Go ahead! Try this simple sight word swat game. Your kids will love it. And you will get to create a new memory together!
Final thoughts from Anna about her membership with The Activity Room
“There are also the challenges. The challenges motivate me to get going and push myself to do more with the kids. And they also give me a reason to post more to the group.”
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