What is on Your Fridge?
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What do you have posted on your fridge? Notes? Lists? Photos? ABC magnets?
We’ve always enjoyed having family photos on our fridge. When my daughter became old enough to stand up at the fridge, this became an issue because she wanted to play with them. I didn’t feel that it was fair to simply place them out of her reach, after all, they are her family to look at as well.
I went to our local dollar store and purchased magnetic photo holders and after placing the family photos inside them, I taped around the edge to secure the photo inside (we all know that babies enjoy chewing on paper). Then, I used my electronic label maker to make labels for each family member’s name and stuck those labels at the bottom of each photo.
In my opinion, it is never too early to start labeling items around your home with their given names (toy bins, photos etc.). When children are exposed to these literacy tools at an early age, they will also begin to learn how to read and eventually spell those familiar words.
At three years old, my daughter now pulls down the photos of myself and my husband (and now our ultrasound photo of our baby to be born in October) to copy the names of her closest family members when she is drawing pictures of us. She is becoming more and more eager to learn how to print certain words and having them readily available to her on the fridge has helped her learn without becoming frustrated.
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Another item that we have on our fridge is our Fridge Phonics Magnetic Set. As an aside, I put masking tape on all of our toys that make noise, as I feel that they are made to be much too loud for little ones’ ears.
My daughter has enjoyed playing with this ABC set, again, since she was old enough to stand at the fridge. I truly believe that this toy played an enormous part in her learning her letters and letter sounds so early on in life. The songs that this toy plays are very catchy (when not played too loud) and repetitious which is important in early learning.
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Once my daughter turned three, we added the Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder. At first, she wasn’t too interested in learning what it could do, but after a month or so, she learned the different features that were available to her and she now enjoys building words and hearing how they sound.
The Word Builder has helped my daughter learn how to spell many three letter words and I believe, has played a part in motivating her to want to learn how to print.
Since having this toy up on our fridge, my daughter has been pretending to write stories, spell words and has actually written words beside many of her drawings.
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What do you have on your fridge? I’d love to hear more ideas of magnetic activities that children love!
Science-mom says...
This magnetic fridge thing is quite funny because many western European households don’t have such a thing. The fridge is usually built in the kitchen itself just like one of the cupboards. When I first came to Europe 17 years ago, I really wondered at the absence of (visible) fridges in the kitchens till I dared open the cupboards and discovered the secret.When we got magnetic presents from non-European friends, my kids didn’t know what to do with them. After we’ve explained magnetism, they had fun looking around the house where they can stick the magnets on.
As you can imagine, built-in fridges are rather small but somehow European housewives manage. One friend told me that the key to saving money and not putting on weight is having a small fridge
SciFi Dad says...
And so begins the posting about the P-touch…
Just kidding. In all seriousness, the first time I saw her stop in the middle of drawing, go and find my photo on the fridge, and then use it to transcribe my name to the picture, I was floored. Such a cool idea.
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Laural says...
I LOVE that you printed off the names.
I think I may copy that idea. It’s brilliant. Matt is just learning what words look like (he can’t read). Great idea! We lost our fridge alphabet in a move.
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