(Milk) Bottle Cap Activities

So I haven't posted anything particular to what we are working on here on the homeschool front for awhile and, frankly, that's because I've been a little uninspired!  You know how that goes-- what I'm learning is just part of the "ebb and flow" of the homeschool year.  Well, with this wonderful weather and growing interest of a certain now 5 year old girl, I've had a slight change of tune-- and attitude.  Though I'm still finding it difficult to really give as much attention as I'd like to my daughter, these oldies (but goodies!) have once again come off of our shelves and into our daily homeschooling life.  What are the "oldies", you may ask?

BOTTLE CAPS!!!!!!! 

Earlier in the year, I had printed and laminated a couple sets of letter disks from Erica over at Confessions and then glued them to my growing collection of bottle caps.  (Of course, one can always just write the letters on bottle caps and skip the printing, laminating, and gluing, but I'm not too fond of my handwriting and a little on the perfectionist side so I wanted them all to match!)  I then started to create a few printables to give my Pre-Ker something to do on her own while I worked with the olders.  After a few dull attempts (the inspiration had yet to really hit;), I thought to look online ( I know, it takes me awhile sometimes) to see what others were doing with these WONDERFUL, RECYCLABLE caps!  I found just a couple of blogs that had much of anything on them but it was enough to give me that much needed inspiration.  Posted below you'll see those sites -- one that I really liked was applying these to teaching/learning music staff and notes!  I already use these site reading activities from 1+1+1=1 so I just made another activity to go along with it.  PLEASE check her if you like the activity I made with those out if you haven't already and download her site reading activities for free! 

Here's an example of one activity we did this week using the caps: 

Click on these for the Alphabet Mat (lower case), Sight Word Set 1, Sight Word Set 2 (both site word sets correspond with You Can Read units by Carisa at 1plus1plus1equals1).

You'll find lots of way to make and use these wonderful caps at these following sites:

For many ideas to use with pre-schoolers click here (highly recommend, lots of ideas!)

For use with math click here.

For use with music click here.

I will be adding my own alphabet mat (seen in the pictures above) and the activity mat that goes with the You Can Read sets hopefully later tonight-- but it probably will be over the weekend!  (They are made, but supper is not and right now that's more pressing!) So PLEASE, check back if you are interested in printing those off for your use! 

** Why I like bottle caps:

•  SO easy to collect (just ask a couple friends and in no time you'll be overrun, I promise!)
• Easy for little people to get their fingers around
• perfect to come up with many activities all using the same manipulatives
• my own "littles" love them!  (Didn't get a picture of it, but my 3 year old matched letter this week too-- and right now he only knows one of those actual letters-- so it's fun to see him drawn into learning with these, too!)

What do YOU do with bottle caps?!?  Leave a comment and let me know!  (Even if it's to say "throw them away" ;)