Christmas-Themed Math Activities

We’ve been doing some fun activities this first week of Advent and I thought I’d share a couple of them with you now in a bit more detail.  You’ll also see them in the weekly Tot School post.

We did a great clothespin counting activity.  I found these cute Christmas tags and ribbon at the Target dollar spot.  I wrote a number from 1 to 10 on the tags, then attached a length of ribbon to each one with a stapler.  I put some foam Christmas stickers on clothespins (you’ll need 55 clothespins total) and M clipped them to the ribbons, counting up to the number on each tag as he did so.  This great idea came from here, where it was done with an autumn theme.    He really stuck with this and did all 10 tags!  Why I don’t have a picture of that, I’m just not sure. :)  Crazy mommy-brain.

 

Next, a fun patterning activity with clothespins (again!) and cardstock Christmas lights.  I made a pattern, then traced it onto red, green, blue, and yellow cardstock.  I cut out the lights then added detail with a black marker. 

M and I strung the lights up on some yarn which was tacked into his flannel board, which is just flannel on a foam core board and comes in handy for things like this.

There are no action shots because we took turns holding the Christmas light and yarn together while the other person clipped on the clothespins.  M is really into patterns now that he’s got it all figured out.  He told me, “they’re taking turns!”  Um, why didn’t I think of that?  Weeks of trying to figure out how to help him understand patterns… I could’ve used that idea! 

We did a simple ABAB pattern as you can see.  I’m going to do this with him again next week and see how he does with an ABCABC pattern – I’m running with the taking turns idea.  I’m not sure if an AABB pattern would make sense at this point. 

Both of these activities were really enjoyed by M and I love that he was honing those fine-motor skills as well as learning a little math!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – November 29, 2009

 

This was a pretty light week for us… and we enjoyed it!  We didn’t try to do too much, and just had fun.

Fine Motor Skills

M cut strips of green and red paper with the “zig zag” scissors, then we made a chain of loops and used stickers to close them up: He was very interested in this activity, and caught on to the fact that we were making a pattern.  This was a real breakthrough because in the past he hasn’t gotten the whole *pattern* idea.  I expected lightbulbs to appear over his head and bells to ring, but he just calmly said, “it’s a pattern, we need green next.”  Ha ha, this kid always amazes me and makes me laugh. :)

He spent a LOT of time popping the tiny bubbles on this bubble wrap, such a great activity for strengthening those little fingers:

 

He put pipe cleaner “branches” into the holes of a salt shaker, then added fall colored leaves (pony beads).  He loved this, and thought it was hilarious to call them branches and leaves.  We got this idea from the Schafer Family blog.

 

And laced up some Autumn themed lacing cards:

 

Sorting

M used tongs to sort fruit and vegetables from his supply of pretend food:

And we sorted truck cutouts onto a color wheel:

Math Skills

We played “store” with M’s pretend food and a cup of pennies.  We both had so much fun with this and M had a smile on his face the whole time.  I don’t know why we haven’t done this sooner.  He told me later in the day, “I had fun playing store with you, Mommy!” :)  We set up his fruit and veggies on the loveseat and he picked the items he wanted and I told him the price.  It was perfect for counting practice, and when he ran out of money we had a short conversation about why we can’t always have everything we want.  This great idea came from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!

 

Sensory

We played a sensory game with a few matching pairs of items and a small pillowcase.  One of each pair went into a small container and the other went into the pillowcase.  M had to pick an item from the plastic container, then try to find the matching item in the pillowcase using his sense of touch only. I held the bag for him, but he was on his own here just so I could take a picture. :)  He did great with this and had so much fun we did it again right away.  Here are the items we used: pennies, pinecones, wooden blocks, megablocks, clothespins, glass pebbles, pipecleaners wound into a circle, craft leaves, and spoons.

 

Thanksgiving

Here’s a picture of our finished Thanksgiving tree:

We had so much fun with this and we will definitely be doing it again.  What a great way to list our blessings and what we are thankful for.

We went to our Nature Center again for our weekly class and while there the kids drew pictures of what they are thankful for.  Here’s M’s: Apples were first on his list, you can see it in the middle.  Other things were his family, building a snowman, and going sledding when it snows.  He had a great time scribbling… I was surprised because he has not shown that much interest in crayons at home.  At the nature center he was still coloring when all the other kids were done!

I printed a turkey out from here, and M painted it with his watercolors, then cut the tail feathers apart:

 

Imagination

M has a tiny teddy bear that he’s been calling “baby” lately.  (He wants us to have a baby so badly!)  He made a little bed and “baby” slept in it: Then “baby” woke up and wanted to be rocked (someone else wakes up and likes to be rocked sometimes too). What a great daddy!! :)  (No, that isn’t quite the same way I rock M!)

For more Tot School posts, go here.

Have a beautiful week! :)

Super Easy Sticker Scenes

We have had some great fall and farm themed puffy stickers lying around the house for several weeks now and I’ve been waiting to use them because I just wasn’t sure what to do with them.  Then I saw this in the Oriental Trading Co. catalog:And I thought, that looks so easy to make!  So, I made some. :) 

There aren’t a lot of fall and farm stickers, so I didn’t make a full page sticker scene.  I thought about doing that and adding it to M’s homemade sticker book, but decided against it.  Instead, I made them with ziploc bags.

Simply cut construction paper however you want, then layer it using double stick tape.  Make sure it will fit into your bag, and pop it in.  Seal the bag so all the air is out (as much as you can).

A close up: These are quart-size bags.  Stickers go in the back:I made these last weekend and put them on M’s activity shelves this week.  They were super simple to put together, and quick too!  I’m pleased with how they turned out and I hope he likes them too. ;)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School

November 22, 2009

 M is 38 Months old

My camera battery died in the middle of tot school one day so some photos of just the activities were taken later in the week... like 5 minutes before I wrote this post. :)

ABCs and Pre-writing:

M is going through some anti-craft phase right now, and this includes the craft pages for our ABC book.  He loves cutting and pasting for the collage pages though: So, apparently we will now have an ABC collage book.  I’m hoping the craft pages will make an appearance again sometime soon, but I’m leaving this kind of thing totally up to M.  Here are his Ll and Oo pages: (This was when the no-crafts discovery was made.  M cut the letters out, but refused to do the rest, so yours truly did it in a futile attempt to get him interested.)

On a more positive note, he was totally into the tracing pages.  We “read” his book together and then he practiced holding the dry-erase marker correctly and traced the letters:

We also did our cardstock letters and glass pebbles activity (both from Dollar Tree!): He loves this.  It’s simply setting a letter out and then tracing it with the pebbles in the same way you would draw the letter (start at the top, go down, etc.).

For the very first time we had a sand tray to trace letters.  I was hesitant to do this because I thought at some point M would just want to play in the sand, most likely getting his little cars involved.  We had a little talk about how this is only for drawing letters, shapes, or numbers in, and he actually did pretty well.  He did experiment with just doodling in it too, which was fine with me.  We used this with our sand letter cards: He really did a great job.

We also matched up our Mama and Baby letters with these fun cards (Dollar Tree!):

 

He’s been playing quite often with a fishing game I made 2 years ago (he loved it then and still plays with it frequently) : The fish have letters on them and metal grommets for eyes.  The fishing pole has a magnet on the end of the string to catch them.  The chair, in case you were wondering, is M’s “fishing bridge” and the floor there?  “Floaty Pond”.  :)  As opposed to other side of the room, which is “Sinky Pond”.   Yep!

Pre-literacy Skills:

I have a subscription to an email full of free samples from Dover Publications.  The email comes weekly and I always save a ton of things.  One was these Opposites cards: M was very interested in this – of course he knew about opposites, but didn’t know the term for it.  He enjoyed matching these up and I plan to print more for him soon.  He would say “If it isn’t hot” (and grab the hot card), “then it’s cold!” (and match it to the cold one). 

Fine Motor Skills:

He played with another I Spy Sensory Bin – I found some great new things to put in it for him – a little hammer, screwdriver, pliers, and saw – such cute and tiny things!  We also used a variety of other things found around the house.  I didn’t have a theme at all… but he loved it!

And a Curious George puzzle:

 

Large Motor Skills:

After reading about how important a workout of large muscles can be in a boy’s learning, we did our movement cards before a lot of the other work.  M always enjoys this!

Leaping :)…

 

Math Skills:

I thought this would be a super-fun activity – connecting dots to make shapes: M was interested at first, but quickly moved on to something else.  The idea for this was here.

I found some wooden tan grams at Michael’s  ($1.00 – you should go now!)  and printed a couple of puzzles for him:

 

Size sorting with Bob the Builder trucks (loved this activity and the next one, of course):

 

And size sequencing with Scrambler, also from Bob the Builder:

 

History:

We have been reading some great Thanksgiving books and I told him the basics of the first Thanksgiving with this flannelboard set: He listened very well and then told Daddy the story later!

 

Life Skills:

This week we took the drawer locks off of M’s dresser drawers and he was given two new jobs – put his own clothes away after they are folded, and pick out his own clothes to wear each morning.  He is loving this new-found freedom, such a big boy!  And while the clothing choices are not ones I would’ve made, I’m very, very proud of him!  And now I know that the red shirt is way too small and needs to be packed away. :)

Nature and Science:

We also had a class at our local nature center all about apples this week.  M had so much fun taste testing and graphing his favorite apple, cutting an apple to see the star inside, and even squishing an apple to make cider!  The children were all given their own apple seed and we went to a beautiful sunny field where they planted them. So much fun!  I need to start including our nature center experiences in my tot school posts – we always learn so much there!

For more Tot School, go here!

Have a beautiful week! :)

Tot School – Nov. 15, 2009

M is 38 months old

We have had an odd couple of weeks.  Two weeks ago I suddenly felt burned out and apparently M was too – we were both kind of blah all week and did almost no tot school.  It was a rough week, so I didn’t bother to post even the few things we did manage to do. 

This past week M has had a pretty bad cold and we were home every. single. day. all. day. long.  On top of cabin fever I also had 3 very short nights in a row because M would start coughing so badly, and I’d get up to try to help, but mostly just held him and comforted him.  It’s sweet, isn’t it, how big boys turn back into cuddly babies in the middle of the night? :)  But 4 hours of sleep a night had me beat.  Thankfully I’ve had some free time this weekend and I’m feeling human again. :)

Not that this is about me… but just to forewarn you that this post may be, I don’t know, a bit nutty. :)

We did our ABC train in the pocket chart: 

We matched fur to animals with this file folder game:

 

Played with this bear dress up puzzle from the Target dollar spot:

 

He did some Bob the Builder truck name puzzles with flat glass marbles (definitely the hit of the week):

 

M worked with his build-a-letter homemade set, and was much more into it this time than he was originally.  It may have helped that I only set out a few letters.

 

We pulled out our counting mats and he counted with some skittles that were left over from his Halloween stash:

 

I found some very inexpensive plastic canvas stars at Walmart and M “sewed” it with a length of yarn and a plastic needle.  He really liked this activity!  It seems fine motor skill activities are always favorites around here. :)

 

I gave him a cardboard tube with numbers written on it randomly and some number stickers and he matched them up.  We did this once before with letters; for some reason he loved doing it with letters, but wasn’t that interested in the number tube.

 

The Target dollar spot also had these enormous blocks.  M is totally into blocks lately and I knew he would love these!

(See the t-shirt on the floor there?  They make awesome soft hankies for sore little noses that won’t stop running!)

 

We have been talking about animals in autumn, mainly raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, owls, and bats.  We checked out several good books from the library, and I found a Your Big Backyard magazine on the sale cart there for 10 cents, from October of 2008.  It was full of great information about animals.  On top of talking about squirrels and owls, it had a section that talked about how some animals have fur and skin that helps them hide.  M was totally interested in that part: It also had a cute mini-book to make that had M decide what animal would be on the next page by looking at a small part of the animal on the page before: It also had mazes, games, great fact pages… I could go on and on.  I have heard of Your Big Backyard, but I had no idea it was such an awesome magazine.  We loved it! 

 

M also did a raccoon craft using shapes: He did a great job with it and had a lot of fun sorting the shapes out first.  Anything with googley eyes and/or glue is sure to be fun. :)

Last year, pre-blog, I made these stick puppets for M: I brought them out again and he had fun learning this cute rhyme:

One little owl when the moon was new,

Along came another owl and then there were two!

Two little owls perched high in a tree,

Along came another owl and then there were three!

Three little owls flew to the barn door,

Along came another owl and then there were four!

Four little owls lined up side by side,

Along came another owl and then there were five!

Five little owls called “Hoo, hoo, hoo”, then they

flapped their wings and away they flew!

I can’t remember where I first found this poem, sorry!  M loves it and we did this several times.

He really liked it so much (he’s very into poems lately, and loves having visuals for them), I made some squirrel stick puppets and we learned another poem.  The clip art for the squirrels was taken from classroomclipart.com, a new site for me.  I love free clipart!

5 Little Squirrels

The first little squirrel said, “I want to play!”

The second little squirrel said, “Let’s find nuts today!”

The third little squirrel said, “Yes, nuts are good!”

The fourth little squirrel said, “They’re my favorite food!”

The fifth little squirrel said, “Let’s climb this tree,

and crack our nuts… one, two three!”  (CLAP 3 TIMES)

 

We played our autumn matching game several times:

 

We also played a fun game that was came in our High Five magazine October issue.  It’s called Gathering Nuts and I turned it into a file folder game (just laminated it onto a file folder).  It’s a basic counting game, and M had a lot of fun with this one.  He and Daddy played it every chance they got.

 

I also pulled out another game I made last year (also pre-blog) with squirrels and acorns.  M matched the acorn numbers to the  squirrels.  I’m sure there are other things we could do with these; I need to think about that some more.  Suggestions?

 

M played a pinecone race game.  I intended to set a timer for this, but forgot, so it wasn’t much of a race really, but M enjoyed it enough that he did it on his own several other times throughout the week.  First I had him carry pinecones in a ladle from one end of the living room to the other and dump them in a basket.  This was much too easy, so we switched to a large spoon:

Lots of fun was had! :) 

And, this is super-duper late, but I have to show you him in his Halloween costume: Complete with winter hat and winter coat on underneath everything.

Is it just me, or is he really cute? ;)  Maybe it’s just that mustache, hee hee. :)

Sorry I was all over the place in this post!  I’m going to try organizing our activities by skills for our tot school posts.  Obviously I’m not starting that today, but I do plan to start doing it soon! :)

For more tot school posts go here!

Have a beautiful week! :)