Math Printables

I’m in an ocean of cardstock, printer ink, and laminating pouches here.  And, for the most part, I’m loving it!  Never fear, I am planning lots of fun, active, non-paper activities to do with M this fall, but still… a girl needs a reason to use her laminator, right? ;)

The first printable is a set of autumn-themed playdough number mats.  A long enough title, no?  These are for help in learning numeral formation, practicing counting, and developing fine motor skills.  Laminate them (or put them in page protectors, which is probably what I’ll do) and then use with playdough.  Roll “snakes” to form the numerals, and roll “balls” to place on the objects on each page.  As the number gets higher the circles get smaller, so those fine motor skills get a good workout.

Autumn Number Play-doh Mats

 

Also, I made this quick little chart to count with and introduce graphing.  Place small items – beans, plastic counters, little stickers – in the boxes below each number.  The number of items placed should match the number at the top of the column.  Make sure to have 55 little items available as a control of error.  The child should have just enough to complete the grid.  M has already been doing this – once with beans and once with Tigger stickers. :)  He loves it and loves pointing out that stairs or a triangle (or a piece of pizza, as he says) are formed when the page is finished.

Number Stamping Chart 1-10

Have a beautiful day! :)

Biggie Fuse Beads

I bought a bucket of these a couple of months ago and put them out on M’s shelves as a fine motor activity.  He is crazy about them!  We also bought the set of two clear plastic pegboards, and he places the beads on the little pegs.  Once he’s made  a design he likes, I iron it for him (with the included ironing paper) and they melt together.  I’m sure most of you have seen the mini version of this for older kids, but the Biggie version is a great way to start those little fingers out!

At first M made his own designs, like these:Going clockwise from the top – a square, ,a wagon, a truck, and dragon bones. :)

But just recently he became interested in using the patterns that came with the peg boards.  Then we found more patterns for them here, which was very exciting, and I was told to print them all out. :)  *Note: the patterns for Biggie Beads start at the bottom of the page that I’ve linked to. 

His collection so far:Honestly, I think that photo shows only part of what he’s made; we’ve gone through 2 buckets so far, but I’m not sure where he’s hoarding the rest of his creations.

This has ended up being a fantastic activity for him – it works those fine motor muscles in his hand, works on the all-important tripod grasp, has helped him develop some patience and perseverance as he sees each pattern to the end, matching up the beads just right to the pattern.  It has expanded his attention span also, and gives him a good sense of accomplishment and pride in a job completed.  Wow – all that from a bucket of beads! :) 

M will be 4 soon, and once we finish up our most recent bucket of Biggie Beads, I’ll see how he does with the smaller version. 

Is there a product out there that you and your child have fallen in love with?  Share it in the comments – I would love to find more great products like this!

Have a beautiful day! :)

ABC Collage and Trace Book

I’ve written about M’s little ABC binder before.  He still uses it on a regular basis and enjoys it.

There are two parts to this little book (a 3-ring binder, actually).  First, each letter has a tracing page.   Both upper and lower case letters are on one page, and they each take up about half the page.  It’s so much easier for children to learn to write using large spaces… once they get the movement down, they’ll be able to start making their letters smaller and smaller. These are placed in page protectors and then clipped into the binder.  M uses a dry-erase marker to trace them, then erases them with a small piece of felt.

Secondly, each letter has a collage page that goes beside it, showing things that begin with that letter.  I print out a page of clip art and a page that is blank except for the letters in the middle:

M calls these his “cutting pages” and LOVES them.  He cuts out the pictures and glues them onto the blank letter page.  This isn’t about precise cutting, and he leaves a pretty good border of white around each picture.  The clip art is spaced widely apart to allow for plenty of room.

The finished collage page is then placed in a page protector and added to the binder, next to the tracing page.  He can “read” his abc book by himself and practice tracing the letters any time he wants!

It’s been such a great project for him that I decided to make it available as a printable.   The file download includes the tracing pages for each letter, a page of clip art, and a page to glue the pictures onto after they are cut out.  Each letter has 5 pieces of clip art except for X and Z.  C and G both have two sets of clip art – one for the hard C or G sounds, and one for the soft C or G sounds.

Go here for the download, or click on one of the images above. 
Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner / Weekly Wrap-Up – July 9, 2010

This is the last preschool post for a while…  M is not excited about much that’s been out for him lately and I need to take a break and rethink some things.  And, well, it is summer. :)  So this wrap-up is for a few things we’ve done that he’s actually enjoyed over the past several weeks.

Math Skills:
I made some quick number cards and we used them with these little number rods I found at a thrift store:We did them in a very Montessori-ish way, going slowly and making sure to count each section of each rod, then naming the number of both the rod and the card.  M seemed to respond well to having “rules” for doing this.


Then we made a triangle with them:Unfortunately I didn’t get a full set of the number rods.  I plan on making some Montessori bead bars so we can continue this kind of activity with 10’s and 100’s. 

M worked on his fine motor skills, lining up flat glass marbles on craft sticks numbered 1 to 6 (then he lost interest):

Literacy Skills:
At Michael’s they have small painted wooden pieces for 25 cents each.  I picked up a handful and we’ve been using them to make up stories (this fabulous idea came from Jill at The Shafer Family): We use them in a variety of ways – sometimes one person begins with a piece and then the next person adds a piece and a bit of the story and so on.  Sometimes M just wants me to make up a story with all the pieces (or Daddy, who is a master storyteller!).  Sometimes we close our eyes and pick one piece out of a container and have to make up a story as we go along.  We’ll also be using these for phonics sorting.

I put our pipe cleaner letters out with a pan of flour for M one morning.  He spent a good 20 minutes running his fingers over the pipe cleaners and then drawing the letters in the flour.  The flour is so soft and cool – I think he really enjoyed this!

Fine Motor Skills:
M sorted seashells in a tray with tongs (idea from No Time for Flashcards):

He practiced some folding skills with his new Kumon First Book of Folding:

Then we worked on more folding and taping skills to make these cute little puppets from a recent issue of High Five:
And M used a small spoon to put marbles into this tray:   He LOVED this, which was a bit of a surprise to me (not sure why).  The tray is from some old board game of my husband’s.  I love how the clear blue marbles shine when the light hits them just right.

Sensory:
This sensory bin was another morning activity (planned to give me a few minutes of peace in the mornings).  M had a blast with it.  I put some water in a tub, and added a few drops of dish soap.  I added in a whisk, a baster, a strainer, and some small scoops:
It didn’t take long for the whisk to whip up some bubbles:
Finally, I gave him a straw and he had a lot of fun blowing into the water to make very big bubbles:  

Science:
One day I found M in his room with my set of small screwdrivers, taking apart flashlights and anything else he could think of. :)  He is definitely a budding scientist or engineer.

Creative Play:
For your amusement, here’s some self-portraits taken by M with my camera (I didn’t know about these until I uploaded the pics):   
I’m linking this up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out for some great school posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)

3-D Nature Art

M has a “nature basket” that he just adores.  Anything interesting that he finds outside is lovingly placed in his nature basket.  Quite often it’s mainly full of leaves and I empty it every once in a while (he doesn’t seem to notice).  This time, however, it had lots of really cool things in it – a group of leaves still clumped together on a stem, several pieces of bark (he’s taken to sawing the bark off of our fire wood), some maple seeds, and some tiny pinecones.  I decided these were keepers and set up an art activity for him one morning.

Here’s what we used:
His nature basket, an egg carton, and some playdough that we need to use up so we can make a new batch.

(As an aside, this playdough has been around since Valentine’s Day – seriously!  And it is still in perfect condition!  I am loving our homemade playdough.  I know I posted our recipe at sometime… I’ll have to look for that link!)

M was really excited about this project, even more so than I expected him to be.  He rolled small portions of the playdough into balls and set them inside the egg carton sections, pressed them down a tiny bit, and then stuck his nature treasures into the playdough:
We didn’t have enough playdough for 2 of the sections, so he decided to leave the two sections in the center empty.  We've noticed he's very symmetrical with things like this - is that odd for a 3 year old?

Here’s what his final product looked like:

And the view from the side:
M was very proud of it, and I absolutely love it!  It looks so neat sitting on a table in our breezeway.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner / Weekly Wrap-Up – Bugs!

We finished our bug unit a couple of weeks ago, but… life intervened and I haven’t had a chance to write it all up until now. 

I use the term “bugs” to mean any creepy crawly thing, so although we talked about how spiders are not really insects, we still included quite a few spider-ish activities. 

I wrote about the bug books we read in this post,  and a couple of bug crafts we did here and here, in case anyone is interested. :)

To begin, I set up a sensory bin that was full of Easter grass, and hid 20 plastic bugs in it.  M had to find them, then use the tweezers to pick them out and place them on the grid.  I also had his little bug viewer out in case he wanted to examine some of them more closely.  (The grid was used so he would know when he had found all the bugs).M has been using his bug viewer (Target!) quite a bit outside – capturing bugs and them looking at them.  I’m… let’s say – not exactly a bug person… and somehow I always end up worrying about them escaping and getting on me and forget to take pictures.  But, believe me, M has spent plenty of time outside looking and learning about real bugs (even telling caterpillars that they are going to turn into butterflies – so sweet!), there just aren’t many photos to prove it. :)

We talked about the names of the various insects, then sorted them by color onto a color wheel:
For a fine motor skill, I showed M how to wrap bugs up in yarn… like a spider wraps them up in order to save them for eating later.  He had so much fun with this!  He had a little spider web and a plastic spider from a community center activity we’d done recently.   So he played for a very long time, pretending a bug would get in the web, then he’d wrap it up, then along would come the spider and eat them all up.  It was getting pretty gory, let me tell you, and M had a ball with this ! :)
At our nature center M did some pond dipping with the other kids… using a net to scoop up interesting things and then examining them in a bowl.  My pictures weren’t great, but he caught a damselfly, a dragonfly nymph, and a tiny snail, along with lots of plant life:      We also saw this lovely spiderweb, which fascinated him: 
I found an amazing bug book at a garage sale over a year ago.  It includes a tray of bug parts that snap onto each page.  You can create the bugs that are described, or use the pieces to make a weird bug creation all your own.  M had a blast with this book!
I’ve also been holding onto some beautiful bug flashcards I found about a year ago.  Here’s a sampling of them:
There’s 36 in all, and I have 2 sets.  I split them in half and placed 18 of them in a circle on the floor around the room.  The matching cards were placed in a pile.  He took a card from the top of the pile and had to find its match, by moving the way that particular bug moves, as he went around the room.  So here he is hopping like a grasshopper:
Crawling like a spider:
Wriggling like a worm or caterpillar:
And flying like a butterfly (with a bit less gracefulness) :He really worked up a sweat with this one!  But he had so much fun, he begged to do the remaining 18 the next day! :)  If only I could think of activities like this for everything we do… he is such a kinesthetic learner, and I am such a non-kinesthetic kind of mama.  {sigh}

I found some storyboard pieces here that go with the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.  I made them into magnets and M had fun retelling the story with them. 
I made a file folder game, inspired by this one at Mama Jenn’s blog, but using butterflies from Prekinders that I had already printed out. 
The idea was to match up the halves.  We talked about how butterflies are symmetric, meaning each wing is a mirror image of the other.  M understood this, but was completely NOT into this activity.  I’m not sure if the more muted colors were not to his liking, or if it was a bit overwhelming – it is a pretty tough visual discrimination activity, with many looking almost alike, but not quite.  Or maybe he’s just tired of this sort of thing. 

He loves doing “what’s different” activities, so I made up these little cards for him  (you can download them here):They were laminated, so he could use a dry-erase marker and erase them – something everyone loves, right? ;)

I put these little foam capsules out for him and he enjoyed watching them open up in warm water.  This time we used pretty hot water and he took them out with tongs.  They dissolved so much more quickly than they have in the past with only lukewarm water.   These were all bug-shaped and we identified each one, then made them into stamps by gluing them onto peanut butter lids.
We played some basic grid games using bug grids that I made and printed out.  These can be downloaded here.  These are great for math and reading skills!  Going from left to right and top to bottom mimics the movement of reading.  He loves doing these – we just roll the die and stamp out that number of bugs.
I found the following two activities online, and thought they were great ideas.  M did not like them.  Not one little bit.  Maybe he wasn’t in the mood, I don’t know, but they were huge flops! However, I still think they are good ideas so I’m sharing them anyway. :)

First, a ladybug visual discrimination activity from Making Learning Fun:
And a phonics activity from Sparklebox, using caterpillars.  I wrote all the letters of the alphabet on 26 flat glass marbles from Dollar Tree, and the idea was to match them up to the beginning sound of the objects pictured on each caterpillar section :
Look at that face… bored out of his mind! :)  Oh well, I try to not let this kind of reaction discourage me.  Writing these posts helps with that, because I can see how many things he really enjoyed and learned!

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up – check them both out for some great activity ideas!

Have a beautiful day! :)