Mommy & Me Mondays: Hands on Math fun

 Math can sometimes be overwhelming to young learners so why not make it fun. Practice basic skills over and over again with a few simple teacher tricks to keep it fun and always interesting. Small tangible items that can be easily picked up by little fingers are perfect for math time, both in and out of the classroom.

Everything from buttons to beads can all be used to keep little ones eager top learn and practice basic math skills like addition and subtraction. My favorite go to objects are glitter pom poms, they are sparkly and soft and come in all sorts of fun colors and sizes.
In celebration of fall we have been practicing addition using apples trees. Bright red pom poms represent the apples and small wooden trees from my local craft store are the perfect way to teach addition skills.
I start off by reciting a word problem to my little one.
" Tommy climbed an apple tree and picked two apples, Suzie climbed another tree and found three apples. How many did they find all together?"
My daughter listens to my words and then uses the pom poms to show the problem. 2 on one tree 3 on the other. This evening she even got out one of her number puzzles to show the numbers of the apples on the trees.

 

One of the best things about little siblings is they always want to do what the older sibling is doing . So why not use that to your advantage. My daughter helped teach her 18month old brother how to point to the pom pom as she counted the numbers. He can't quite say numbers just yet but he did point and say something. Having her teach her brother helps to reinforce those newly learned math skills.




So as your child is eating breakfast in the morning, or waiting for dinner at night, keep a ziploc bag of pom poms, beads, buttons or whatever else on hand and have them work on their addition problems. Change out the wooden cutouts and objects for the season to keep it fresh and fun for them. You will find that their skills will be stronger just by adding in a few minutes into each day to brush up on their math skills. This will help to reinforce math vocabulary and build upon their natural curiosity for learning. Which will help prepare them for the classroom and all the math fun yet to come. While having a little fun at the same time.

Use the freebie below to encourage those new math skills!

 

If you are looking for a way to get a little more math in your day check out our Morning Math Minute set in our Simply Sprout Store. Have your students or children learn about numbers 1 - 30 with these quick math minute activities. 

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It's Finally Fall & The Letter L

This week we have been working on the letter L. Kaitlyn has been using her letter flash cards and puzzles to practice all of the letters we have learned so far. we start each day out with a review.

Letter Play

Today Kaitlyn used her pom poms to trace the letter L, she also used her homemade fundough to make her letters. We practiced her handwriting and trying to stay on the line while tracing her L's.

Another fun way to review letters is by using a paint tracing bag....Fill a ziploc bag with some paint, close it tightly and get all of the air out while sealing it closed. Have your little one use a q-tip to trace the letters onto the bag, the letters disappear quickly and are a great way to practice using some different materials.

Cooking up some patterns in the kitchen

We had fun cooking up some patterns in the kitchen this week. We made some sugar cookies and separated the dough into three bowls. kaitlyn and I read a book about Fall trees so I asked her what colors we see in fall she chose, green, red and yellow so we used some food coloring to dye the dough. Kaitlyn rolled it out and flattened it with her hands. Using some small leaf cookie cutters she cut out three different types of leaves one type for each color.

When the cookies were all done we practiced making patterns using the three colors of leaves....I must say Kaitlyn had fun with this activity....only hazard is the leaves started disappearing mid activity :)

Colorful Circles & Fall Suncatchers

All week we have talked about colors. We have learned about fall leaves and how they change colors. This activity is a lot of fun and illustrates how mixing two colors can make different colors. First you take a large piece of wax paper, then you squirt some hand sanitizer onto it. Then take some food coloring, we used red and yellow, add a few drops of each. Then fold the wax paper over covering the colors. Kaitlyn mixed the colors by practicing her circles. She drew large and small circles with her finger mixing the colors as she went. Tomorrow we will be using this to make some Fall sun catchers.....so check back to see pictures! we set it out flat to dry over night.

Our L Page 

We made our L page for our ABC Book. Kaitlyn made a leaf rubbing using several leaves we found outside. I found it helpful to use double sided tape to stick these onto the table so they wouldn't shift while she was doing her crayon rubbing. I wrote the letter L using a sharpie marker and had Kaitlyn glue her smaller leaves onto the L.

All week we have been getting ready for fall we have enjoyed nature walks and many books about the changing of the seasons. Today we worked on some colorful and very messy art projects to get the house all ready for fall!

Get three large bowl and fill with 1/4 cup of paint we used red, brown and orange. I also mixed some bronze paint in with the brown to give it some shimmer. Then I added some water to dillute the paint. We took our containers outside and Kaitlyn took coffee filters and dipped them into the paint bowls, after she dipped them she wrung them out and then we set them out on the deck to dry. Setting them on wax paper works best for easy removal after drying.

Mommy's naptime craft project

While the kiddos were napping I put my crafting skills to work, I heated up my hot glue gun and got busy!
Step 1: Take a cardboard circle ( I use cake rounds) and cut out the center. Then take the painted coffee filters and bunch them up at the middle. Hot glue them onto the cardboard circle.
Step 2: Go around the whole circle in teh same fashion.
Step 3: Add som ribbon, loop it through the wreath and hot glue together, hang in front of a miror for a dramatic fall look!

I had some left over coffee filters so I added them onto some twigs we collected on our nature walk. They made for great table decorations in the dining room! The house is all decorated, the cinnamon candle is burning in the kitchen, my favorite sweater is hanging in the closet.....now if the cooler temperatures could just arrive!

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