Our busy binder has been one of our absolute favorite resources we have been using the last couple of years in our homeschooling. Both of kids, currently 3 and 5, love doing the activities inside the binder. Since it has activities of all levels, both kids are able to do activities on their level.
One of my favorite things about our busy binder resource is being able
to take it along with us anywhere we go. We typically use it for quiet
time and filler activities during our day if we don't feel like doing
anything else during the day; however, it is perfect for taking along
with you on car rides, to doctor's appointments, on long trips, to
restaurants and so on. Print a couple pages or all the pages and have
binders ready to go for whenever you need to pull one out. I am sharing all of the activities included in our busy binder resource, which are available as individual downloads or all together in a bundle at a discounted price.
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CALENDAR ACTIVITIES
The Busy binder calendar activities can be used in a variety of different ways. You can print and prep them for extra calendar practice, use them alongside your calendar time, or for independent skill practice during the day. As we start our first official year of homeschooling, we will be using this part of the binder alongside our calendar board to discuss important calendar concepts and will be filling in the calendar and different sections each day as a review of the calendar and how it works.
CALENDAR TIME: This activity can be used to discuss calendar concepts. All parts are removable and can be used during circle time or calendar time. Fill it in all at once or do it day by day, adding dates on as you go.
DAYS OF THE WEEK ORDER: Use this activity to work on placing the days of the week in order starting with Sunday and going all the way to Saturday. Sing a fun days of the week song to go along with this activity.
MONTHS OF THE YEAR ORDER: This activity is just like the days of the week, but puts the months of the year in order.
YESTERDAY WAS, TODAY IS, TOMORROW WILL BE: This activity can be completed each day to discuss the current day, yesterday, and tomorrow. Fill in the boxes with the correct day of the week.
WEATHER/TEMPERATURE/SEASON: This activity allows you to discuss the weather, temperature, and seasons. All 4 seasons are included (fall and autumn wording), many different types of weather, and four temperatures: hot, cold, cool & warm.
SEASON PICTURE SORT: This activity has children sorting pictures by when they would most likely occur. While it does rain at other times than just spring, we often think of spring as our rainy season. Both autumn and fall wording has been included.
MONTHS OF THE YEAR/DAYS OF THE WEEK TRACE & WRITE: Each of these activities included 3 differentiated sheets that you can use, one with words to trace on kid writing lines, one to trace without lines, and one where you can just write the days of the week and months of the year.
ALL ABOUT ME ACTIVITIES
The Busy Binder All About me activities were created to help my toddler and preschooler/kindergartener work on special information like how to spell their name, mommy and daddy's phone numbers, address, and their birthday. All of these activities are editable so that you can make them personal to your family and children.
MY NAME IS: This activity has two parts. Children will use the letter tiles to spell out their name and then they can use a dry erase marker to write their name. My daughter learned to spell her name from doing a similar activity on our calendar board and after just a few times of using this activity page, my three year old has learned how to spell his name as well. This is a great interactive way to learn how to spell your child's name without the "drill."
MY PHONE NUMBER IS: I printed out two of these sheets and my kids work on learning both mommy's and daddy's phone numbers. I feel it is a valuable thing to know in case anything ever happens and they need to get a hold of one of us. Knowing our phone number could truly help them find their way back to us if we were ever separated.
MY ADDRESS IS: This is another valuable skill I feel all children should know from a young age. Knowing their address can be super important in case of an emergency and they have to give information to emergency responders.
MY BIRTHDAY IS ON:What kid doesn't look forward to their birthday right? Kids love birthdays and love telling you how old they are. This interactive page helps them to learn when their birthday is and see how old they are in sentence form.
COLOR ACTIVITIES
All of the busy binder color activities are perfect for toddlers and preschoolers working to learn color identification, sorting by color, and color words. My three year old loves doing these pages and can do them all independently.
GUMBALL COLOR MATCHING: Kids will match each of the colored gumballs to the correct color in the gumball machine.
COLOR PALETTE: This activity actually has two different versions, one with color words and one without. Children will work to match the colored paintbrush to the correct paint spot on the paint palette.
COLOR SORT: This activity works on sorting pictures to their correct color. All 11 colors are included for sorting practice.
COLOR WORDS TRACE/WRITING: This will help young learners practice spelling and writing all of the color words. There are 3 different versions of this activity.
SHAPE ACTIVITIES
All of the busy binder shape activities are perfect for toddlers and preschoolers working to learn shapes, shape sorting, and shape words. This is the main binder my three year is working on right now and it has really helped him to learn some of those tricky shape names.
SHAPE SORT: Children will sort pictures of real objects by shape. Shapes represented include: rectangle, square, triangle, circle, rhombus, star, heart, oval, octagon, hexagon, trapezoid, and pentagon.
SHAPE MATCHING: Young learners will match the shapes to their shape outline.
SHAPE TRACING: Children will trace each of the shapes on the page using a dry erase marker (if laminated) or a marker/pencil if not laminated.
SHAPE WORD TRACING: Children will practice writing and spelling each of the shape words. This activity includes 3 different versions for differentiation.
NAME THE SHAPE: Children will work to match the shape word to the correct shape outline at the top of the page.
LETTER ACTIVITIES
The letter activities in the busy binder are great for working on visual discrimination, alphabetical order, and beginning sounds. My five year old LOVES to help her brother with these activities as he is still learning letter names and sound, but he is great at matching letters to letters. She plays teacher with him, telling him the letter, and then he matches it to the correct letter on the mat. It's the cutest thing to watch and he has definitely caught onto a few more letters and sounds over the last couple of weeks.
BEGINNING SOUND MATCH: Match the pictures to the correct letter for the beginning sound.
CAPITAL AND LOWERCASE LETTER MATCH: These pages can be used as a lowercase to lowercase or capital to capital match or you can use the pieces and have your children match capital to lowercase and vice versa.
ALPHABETICAL ORDER: Children will take the letter cards and place them in alphabetical order.
LETTER TRACE & WRITE: These pages are to be used for practicing writing and tracing letters. There are pages for capital, lowercase, and both capital and lowercase letters together.
NUMBER ACTIVITIES
LETTER/NUMBER SORT: Visually discriminate between letters and numbers and sort them into correct categories.
COUNT & MATCH NUMBERS: Children will count the bears in the jars and then match it to the matching number.
NUMBER ORDER: Place numbers 0-10 in order.
TEN FRAME COUNTING: For this activity, kids can pick a number, place it in the box at the top of the page and then use the gumballs to fill in the ten frame. Repeat with other numbers.
NUMBER PUZZLES: Pick a bear counter piece, place it on the left side of one of the boxes. Count the bears and then find the matching number. Each of the puzzles only has one piece that matches so this can be self correcting.
NUMBER & NUMBER WORD WRITE & TRACE: This activities has three different versions for both numbers and number words. Children will practice tracing and writing numbers and number words.
MATH ACTIVITIES
These are some of our newest activities and some of my kids favorites. All of our math activities, in addition to all the other activities in the busy binder, are super hands on and interactive, making learning and practicing these skills fun for young learners. Kids are able to practice early learning math skills in a fun way. Mr. 3 was even able to do so many of these activities and loved them.
SIZE SORTING: Sort the butterflies by size: large, medium, small.
IDENTIFYING/EXTENDING/CREATING PATTERNS: These pages focus on patterns. Children will identify the type of pattern each row is, work on extending patterns, and can also create some of their very own patterns.
ORDERING BY SIZE: This activity has two different sets to order. Your kids will order the circles from biggest to smallest, as well as order the pictures of images based on their real life size.
ORDERING BY LENGTH: Children will put the snap cubes in order from longest to shortest.
ORDERING BY HEIGHT: This activity has children placing pencils in order from shortest to tallest.
NONSTANDARD MEASUREMENT: Use the snap cube pieces to match them to the correct length of each object on the page. You can also use real snap cubes to further work on nonstandard measurement.
WHAT DOESN'T BELONG: Use the little x pieces to mark the picture that does not fit with all of the other ones.
MISSING NUMBERS: Determine which numbers are missing in each row and fill in the numbers with the included number pieces.
COUNTING ON: Counting on is a valuable skill for young learners. It's easy to always start at 1 and count on as that is where you always start, but being able to count on from a number other than 1 is something that can take continued practice. Children will work to count on from a given number.
COMPARING NUMBERS: This activity works on comparing both numbers and picture quantities using greater than, less than, and equal two. There are three different pages to work on this skill.
TALLY & GRAPH: Count and tally each of the pictures and then use the tally marks created to graph the total number of each animal pictured.
CLASSIFYING ANIMALS & OBJECTS: These pages have children classifying animals and objects based on a given category. Children will classify animals into four categories: farm, safari, pet, ocean, will classify things into two categories: hot vs. cold, and will classify objects into two categories: wants vs needs.
TELLING TIME: This activity is a fun interactive way to practice seeing and telling time both on a digital clock and analog clock. Children will get to pick a time to put on their "digital clock" and they they can use the clock at the top to create the same time on the analog clock. Times to the hour, half hour, and five minutes are included.
TELLING TIME PUZZLES: This activity has you matching digital and analog clock times to each other. Times to the hour and half hour are included.
COIN VALUE/COIN SORTING/COIN NAMES: These activities are simple, but will help to reinforce coin values, faces, and names. Children will match the money amount to each coin, sort pictures of coins under the correct money amount, and match the coin name to the picture of the coin.
BEFORE AND AFTER NUMBERS: Children will determine which number comes before and after another number. Several pages of this activity are included. Blue numbers are the before numbers and green number cards are the after numbers.
ADDITION & SUBTRACTION MATs: There are two different versions of the addition mat, one with a ten frame and one without, and one subtraction mat. Children will use the included number cards and manipulative pieces to work out different addition and subtraction problems.
ONE MORE/ONE LESS & ADDING/SUBTRACTING: These pages will help children practice basic adding and subtracting. Children will work out the problems and fill in the solution with a green number card.
LITERACY ACTIVITIES
Our literacy activities are also a recent addition to the busy binder and are already well loved by Miss 5. She loves to rhyming, spell works, and work on sight words so the activities in this section help her to practice those skills in a fun, interactive way.
SIGHT WORD SPELLING: I have included all 220 dolch sight words for this activity. Children will pick a sight word card, read it, write it, and then use letter tiles to spell out the sight word. Each set of sight words (preprimer, primer, first, second, & third grade) is designated by a different color.
RHYMING WORD SORT: Children will match rhyming words together, two pictures under each picture already there. Both the word and picture are included on each picture so kids can see the word as they sort.
CVC WORD SPELLING: This activity works on isolating the sounds in CVC words. Children will use the letter tiles to spell out each of the CVC words. Multiple pages are included to work on CVC words for all short vowel sounds.
SYLLABLE SORTING: Counting syllables can be a difficult concept for young learners to comprehend. Using a kinesthetic motion can often help them to chunk the word into syllables. For this activity, children will pick a picture card, say the word, tap out the syllables in the word, and then sort it under the correct number.
OPPOSITES/ANTONYMS: This activity has children working on matching pictures to their opposite/antonym on the page.
SEQUENCING: This activity works on sequencing familiar tasks by first, next, last given three picture cards.
BUSY BINDER BUNDLE BONUS
These tracing line pages are in the BUNDLE ONLY. These are perfect for toddlers and preschoolers and are great to work on tracking, left to right progression, and fine motor skills needed to begin writing. There are three different sheets included.
BUSY BINDER PREP
Each of the sections of our busy binder, comes with picture and written instructions on how to put it together. To prep the binder, you will need binders, Velcro strips, Velcro dots, laminating sheets, and a laminator. I recommend purchasing the Velcro in bulk as you will be using a lot and it would get expensive buying the small packs from a craft store. All of the aforementioned links are the exact things we use and the Velcro is still holding up after 2 plus years of use by a toddler and preschooler.BUY NOW
Did something above catch your eye and you want to get right to work preparing it for your little ones? You can get everything I have shown above in my Busy Binder Activities bundle. Purchasing the bundle gets you all of the activities shown above at a more than a 20% discount than purchasing the resources separately. Are you looking for just certain skills from above. You are in luck. I also offer each section as it's own separate resource in my shop which you can find by clicking on any of the links below!
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