Posts Tagged ‘Counting’
My backyard is covered in spiders, which has led to my son and I trying to identify the ones we find using the internet . Have you ever googled “Spiders” , I never used to be afraid of spiders, super close up pictures of various spiders changed that for good. So if your little one is into these arachnids instead of googling and risking nightmares, make this fun spider craft, play this game and save yourself the grief !
- Gather your materials. You will need a plastic container, we used the plastic part of a light bulb package but any clear plastic would work. Some paint, a hole punch, googley eyes, glue and 4 pipe cleaners.
- Start by punching the holes in the plastic.
- Next paint the container from the inside. My son loved this part of the craft, he thought it was so cool to watch the paint from under the plastic. Let dry. On a sunny day I put this in the window and it dried (mostly) in 45 minutes.
- Cut the pipe cleaners in half
- Thread the pipe cleaners through the holes and twist the ends in place.
- Add the eyes with glue. Let dry.
- Play
Bug Math
I was lucky enough to get gifted these bug counters from a neighbor whose kids have out grown them. I wasted no time using them to teach some math. The goal of this game is to find the matching types of bugs, count them up and then find the number that matches the total in the tray and place them in.
- Gather your materials. You will need some counters ( erasers in fun shapes, poker chips.. or plastic toys work well too), a divided tray, some paper , tape and marker.
- Write out the number totals on your paper, cut and tape into your tray.
- Time to play ( and learn).Group the similar bugs.
- Count them
- Pop them in the right section!
Don’t forget to dance when you are done ! Watch out , those are some mean jazz hands.
10 Comments »
This was a fast easy activity I wanted to do to work on my son’s one to one correspondence but using a theme he is head over heels for . This also allowed me to work on the concept of zero. Since doing this we have been noticing that there are “zero” dinosaurs in the backyard, “zero” boys eating their broccoli at lunch and “zero” children napping! I love it when I stumble on a concept that is new to him and we can work on it in a fun way.
- Gather your materials. You will need 2 sheets of paper , some yarn, a marker, scissors and glue.
- Start by drawing the outline of a guitar on your brown paper . Don’t get hung up on it being perfect, as long as your child can tell it’s a guitar – you are fine!
- Cut out.
You could also do this whole activity just with paper as a work sheet, but I find that even though the difference isn’t great to us between using a pen or the yarn , I think it is for children. Manipulating the objects really creates an experience. - Next add the details and numbers .
- Cut your yarn into short pieces for the strings.
- Time to glue!
This is the step my son joined me at.
Depending on your child’s interest and age you could have them join in whenever. Glue the guitars on. - Identify the numbers and add that many pieces of yarn.
Songs!
I posted this on my facebook page ) but if you missed it. All my song videos that were originally on my blogger site are frozen so you can see them all here !
Book
Sunny
5 Comments »
We have giant daisies in our backyard and thank goodness we do because all my son has wanted to do for art lately has been firetruck or dirt related. Not that most of my readers can’t appreciate that but it’s nice to squeeze some prettier more genteel themes in with the diggers and sirens. This was fast but substantial and after making it we picked a few daisies and counted their petals too!
- Gather your materials. You will need 4 colors ( white, yellow, green and blue) of construction paper ( really you only need one full piece , the others can be scrap) , a marker, glue , scissors and a circle paper punch if you have it.
- Start by punching out some yellow circles, for the center of the daisies. My son adored this step and I had to get him some scrap paper to keep going.
- Cut some stems from the green paper. You can make leaves too, we just chose not to.
- Cut out petals from the white paper.
- Ask your child for numbers to put in the middle of the flowers. Alternatively you can write in the numbers you know your child is struggling with , if you do that write a few they are consistently successful with as well. By setting them up for success with some of the numbers you will boost their confidence and they are more likely to take on the challenge of a “trickier” number.
- Glue the stems on.
- Add glue for the centers.
- Add the centers.
- Add the petals.
I had my son read me the number, then he counted the petals as he added them. Then after he was done we “checked his work” by counting them again.
- Let dry.
Song
I’m a little daisy
tall and slim.
Here are my petals and here is my stem.
When the sun comes up and the rain comes down
I grow and grow up from the ground.
Books
Chrysanthemum
The Gardener
The Boy Who Grew Flowers
9 Comments »
