Driveway Phonics

I most often use my big flat chalk board for math, and I do love my number playground, but, while we were playing on the number line, I realized the driveway would work for phonics, too.  One of the kids was tripping over diphthongs- this has nothing to do with dorky attire - ch, sh, and th were giving him trouble!

It was easy to draw a train track covered with "ch", leading to a house with a sleeping baby (labeled "sh").  The youngest two had fun running up the tracks going "Ch, ch, ch" til they got to the house and "shhhhed" over the sleepy baby.  I eventually added an arrow sign with "th" as in "this" way.

Then I needed somewhere the arrow to point to, so I drew a silly frog and a set of lily pads for skip counting by 5s up to 100.  That was fun, especially when I realized I could also use it to have them count by 10s.

I remember thinking someone could do elementary school with nothing more than a bucket of sidewalk chalk and a library card, and, really, that's not far from the truth. Except for rainy days, I guess!