Welcome back to the "Playful Maths" weekly series brought to you by

  Learn with Play at home (us) and The Imagination Tree

Together, let's make MATHS FUN!

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Last week I shared Pipe Cleaner Numbers.

This week we bring you another 2 Playful Maths Activities using Wooden Blocks. 

Most people I know have a set of colourful wooden blocks. Ours are kept in a wooden cart and are always out and being used in different ways in part of our play. 

The other day the cart was out and I asked my daughter (aged 4) to tell me which colour we had the most of? Well, she didn't know the answer so this set about a fun challenge where we got to learn more about colours, sorting and classifying, counting, estimation, number writing, number recognition and ordering.

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Welcome back to the "Playful Maths" weekly series brought to you by

  Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree

Together, let's make MATHS FUN!

........................................

Last week we brought you 2 more great maths activities using egg cartons.

This week and next we'll be using Paper Tubes. 

Today's activity from us focuses on "Counting and Number Recognition" 

This activity also includes aspects of one-to-one correspondence and a little bit of problem solving, learning shapes, colours and brainstorming.

Ages: 2+

(M has just turned 4. See the bottom for handy tips to Extend or Simplify to meet your child's needs)

Materials: Paint, Paper Tube, Paper, Marker

Before presenting the activity I cut the pieces of paper in half and wrote a number at the top of each page.

I did the numbers 1-20

(choose your numbers according to what the child needs to work on)

The presented activity. 

(I put the paint on a sponge to avoid having too much paint to print with)

Have your child read the number and then print the corresponding number of circles using the paper tube.

I noticed a form of 1:1 correspondence as she had to count aloud each time she stamped to get the correct amount.

As the numbers got higher, I found that sometimes she lost count and was forced to re-count and then count-on to figure out the remaining amount of stamps needed.

Allow your pages to dry.

At this point it's up to you to decide what you want to do with the pages.

Read on to see what we did with them the following day.

First I folded a piece of thick paper around the pages and stapled together to make a book.

She loved that her pictures were now a book and eagerly read the pages, counting the circles as she went.

We then talk about circles and about how we could turn the circles into objects in the book. 

We brainstormed a list of ideas.

I gave her the book and some coloured pencils. She also wanted our list of ideas for inspiration.

Working one page at a time, we talked about the number and what she could turn the circles into.

She then got to work decorating and adding details to the circles.

1 was her of course. There's only 1 Maddie! haha

(The number 4 page turned into our 4 family members, she insisted on 19 ladybird so that one took a while. Each page was something different and it's so much more meaningful to her as a counting book because she made it herself. She has ownership over the work and understands what it means and represents. It doesn't matter that it doesn't look like a work of art)

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by starting with numbers 1-3. Include higher numbers up to 10 as they are able.

- You can Extend this activity in many ways:

• Have the child write the numbers on the pages themselves.
• Focus on the teen numbers and have children stamp 10 times in one colour. Then have the child work out how many more to make the teen number eg 13 is 10 and 3; 19 is 10 and 9 and then stamp the extra amount in a different colour
• What different patterns and designs can they come up with using the paper tube to still display the corresponding number?
• If you make a book, have the children practice their number writing on the opposite page and also make and design a front cover

- Mix it up by using the pictures to make a wall mural or playroom/classroom display, hanging display etc. Mount onto coloured card or press the edges of the paper tubes in to make different shapes for printing.


- For grouping, use a different coloured paint for each small group and a fresh tube for each colour. This will help them with subitising as well. 

- To learn new skills and to consolidate their understanding, children need to experience opportunities to practice these same skills over and over again. 

- Playful Maths. Below are the Egg Carton Activities from both Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree
(click on the pictures to go to the posts)

           



Don't forget to join us next week for the latest Playful Maths activity.

Are there any Everyday Materials that you'd like to see us use? 

Mention it in the comments and we'll see what we can come up with!

Happy playing,

Debs :)

Follow the entire series on our

 Playful Maths Pinterest Board.

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Welcome to  TUESDAY TOTS for this week

This Week:

Learn with Play at home is featuring

5 Fun Activities for Learning
with Natural Materials

from last weeks Tuesday Tots linkup

(if you missed it, we featured Valentines Activities with added learning)

FEATURED

Once again it was a another great week of kids activities linked up to Tuesday Tots. Here at Learn with Play at home we love to include as much learning in our Activities as we can and love exploring the use of all sorts of materials.
The activities that we've featured this week, all include one or more great learning activities using materials that are easily found and sourced.
I hope you enjoy them.

1) Nature Letters. I just loved this gorgeous gumnut alphabet from An Idea on Tuesday. I just wanted to play myself!

2) Clothesline Learning. I loved the 13 fun clothesline activity ideas shared in this post by Raise a boy

3) Name Letter Hunt. A great way to help kids recognise their names with a fun name hunt with shell letters by How to Run a Home Daycare. (I need to get shell collecting!)

4) Toddler Vegetable Exploration. To really get to know vegetables, I loved how Princesses, Pies & Preschool Pizzazz talked and explored the vegetables before painting with them!

5) Colour Matching Game. We love using bottle tops and here is a fun colour matching game using them by Fun Toddler Activities.

Congratulations if you were featured and thanks for linking up!  

If you're featured you're welcome to grab a featured button. via the link.

We love using recycled materials and everyday bits and bobs

for our activities too. Here are a couple from us.

(just click the picture to go to the activity)

               

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Now it's your turn to link up your posts for children aged 5 & under. 

Remember to check back on all the great ideas that are linked up each week starting on a Tuesday.

Maybe next week you will be featured.

(please read the guidelines before linking up)

Happy playing,

Debs :)

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Check out our Newest PLAY collaborative!

The P.L.A.Y Group

(click the pic to go follow our pinterest board)

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Welcome back to the "Playful Maths" weekly series brought to you by

  Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree

Together, let's make MATHS FUN!

........................................

Last week we brought you 2 great maths activities using egg cartons and this week we'll share 2 more before moving on to a new material next week.

Today's activity from us focuses on "Subitising/Subitizing and Sorting" 

This activity also includes counting, one-to-one correspondence, fine motor skill practice and a little bit of probability/chance.

You can also use this activity to practice number recognition, number writing, graphing, addition etc.

(See the Handy Tips at the bottom)

But First- What is Subitising (Subitizing) and why is it important?

Subitising comes from the Italian Word "subito" which means "immediately/suddenly"etc. 

The skill of Subitising/Subitizing refers to the ability to see a small group and know instantly how many are in that group without counting them. For example, if you rolled a 4 on a dice you would know it is 4 straight away without counting each dot.

Developing subitising skills is important because it is an early form of grouping and aids us in learning and understanding number relationships. When you see a 5 on a dice, we know it is 5 straight away because of the 4 dots that form the square and 1 extra. (It tells our brain that 4 and 1 are 5). If you saw 5 dots in a row, your brain may not be able to instantly recognise it as a collection of 5 but should be able to instantly see a group of 2 and 3 which it knows make 5. 

Regular games using dice and using materials like dominos etc. will all aid your child in practicing Subitising and learning number relationships that will form the basis of their number understanding and aid in all future maths learning.

Right, now onto the activity.

Ages: 3+

(M has just turned 4. See the bottom for handy tips to Extend or Simplify to meet your child's needs)

\

Materials: Egg carton, die, paint (or anything you like to colour the inside) and coloured pom-poms (or any coloured manipulatives eg, counters, buttons, large beads etc)

Prepare your Egg Carton. Usually I let my daughter do the painting of things but part of the fun of this activity is the nice colourful surprise.

She was keen to get into this activity and the colourful surprise didn't disappoint

Before starting the game we had a look at the die together and talked about the numbers

Put the die inside the Egg Carton and close the lid

Give the Egg Carton a good shake! 

(This is a fun part, we put it into this activity after having fun shaking an egg carton in this activity)

Put the Egg Carton down and open the lid. She couldn't wait to see which colour the die was in.

Encourage children to tell you the number on the die. See if they can tell you without counting each dot. 

Count out the corresponding colour and number of pompoms.

Keep repeating so that children practice seeing and recognising the amount and then corresponding that to a group they have counted-out

I loved how here she first counted out 4 in one row and 2 in the other and then was all puzzled as to what was going on. She recounted a couple of times to make sure there was still 6 before moving them into 2 rows of 3. Is it just me that gets excited by this learning...?

And repeat...

 "Another 4!" she exclaimed. (we'd had quite a few). Use a time like this to talk about guessing.. (and bringing up basic concepts of chance/probability)

I challenged her to get the dice in a PINK section.. 

To make things a little more interesting I gave her a pair of children's chopsticks (they're joined near the top so easier for little kids and you can get them quite inexpensively..eg $2 at Kmart).

This not only added some extra fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination but brought new life and added  concentration to the same activity.

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by perhaps only including a couple of primary colours. A half dozen egg carton would probably be better for little hands as well.

- You can Extend this activity in many ways:

• add an extra die in the mix to practice addition
• keep a tally of the numbers that come up of each colour to see which colour got the highest overall
• make a graph of the amount of times each colour in landed in... etc

- Mix it up by using this same idea to practice number recognition with a numerical dice and have the children practice writing the number each time.

- To learn new skills and to consolidate their understanding, children need to experience opportunities to practice these skills over and over again. Repeat this activity with different colours, manipulatives etc.

- You don't have to use pompoms. Whatever you have available, so long as you have at least 6 of each colour it's fine

- Don't forget to pop over to The Imagination Tree to see their Egg Carton Maths activity from this week and be sure to stop back next week as together we bring you another 2 fun Playful Maths activities... with Paper Tubes!

Happy playing,

Debs :)

Follow the entire series on our

 Playful Maths Pinterest Board.

-----------------------------------

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I am absolutely thrilled to be introducing you to a new weekly series called "Playful Maths"

Together with the fabulous Anna, from The Imagination Tree, we will be bringing you a whole host of 

fun, hands-on maths using everyday materials.

Each week you will find a Playful Maths activity on both Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree so be sure to keep checking back for all our upcoming fun!

We'll also be pinning them all to our Playful Maths Pinterest Board

Together, let's make MATHS FUN!

........................................

To kick off our series we are starting with the readily available, egg carton!

Today's activity focuses on "Making 10" 

(An important skill where children learn about the combinations of numbers that make up the number 10. This is helpful for mental maths & is necessary down the track to aid with addition, subtraction... etc.) 

This activity includes counting, one-to-one correspondence, addition and fine motor skill practice.

We also used this activity to practice number recognition and number writing

and found it was good for subitizing/subitising as well. 

Ages: 3+

(M has just turned 4. See the bottom for handy tips to Extend or Simplify to meet your child's needs)

Materials: Egg Carton (standard 1 dozen), Pompoms (or counters, buttons, playdough..etc), Scissors. 

Paper and markers (optional)

Directions: Cut off 2 of the egg sections to leave 10 compartments. Provide 10 of each colour pompom.

Start by having your child count the spaces to see how many "eggs" they can fit in.

When she discovered there were 10 spaces I wrote the number 10, a dot representation of it (good for subitising & number combinations) and the word on a piece of paper to help consolidate the connections between the number and symbols.

Let children fill the egg carton with 10 pompoms. 

Encourage them to use as many of each colour as they'd like.

When the carton is full, ask "How many purple pompoms are there?"

"How many yellow pompoms are there?"

How many pompoms all together?

I was going to write the number sentences for her as she made them but she insisted on doing it herself.

I provided a number chart so that she could see the number and attempt to copy it.

Then, repeat. How many different combinations can they find?

Great for fine motor skills too.

Not long after using 6 purple pompoms & 4 yellows to make 10, she ended up doing 4 purple & 6 yellows. This was amazing to her! "4 and 6 make 10 AND 6 and 4 make 10!!" she kept saying. 

She then had to test if the previous combination of 1 purple and 9 yellow would also translate to 9 purple and 1 yellow. It did! She was very pleased about this discovery.

(and you can imagine my delight) :)

We kept going until she'd had enough (which was when we'd made all the combinations you can do with 2 colours). After figuring out that the end result was the same whether it was 6 and 4 or 4 and 6 and testing it again with the 1 and 9, she was convinced that she didn't need to test it out for the other combinations and she "knew" that they made 10 too.

Here she was reading her number sentences. We talked about what the + and = symbols meant as well as their technical name. As she read over her sentences (consolidating the learning), sometimes she would say 6 plus 4 equals 10 and other times, 6 and 4 make 10, or 6 and 4 is 10. I was more than happy with her demonstrating her understanding in this way.

Occasionally she did get confused about the symbols when she tried to use the technical name and would say "equals" when reading a +. Like any language, this is just something she'll get over time from repeat exposure. At this age the understanding of what it means is far more important than the correct terminology but I think there's no harm in letting them know the correct words as well.

Her finished Make 10, number sentences. (she asked me to write a few of the numbers)

This to her is so much more valuable then any number chart I could buy her. 

Why? Because SHE made it. It makes sense to her. 

(she's even realised that by writing her 0 so close to the 1 she is confusing herself when reading it as it looks like a backwards 9 (or a P) haha)

I'm a visual person so couldn't help myself making this little number 10 representation picture.

(and sneakily.. there's 100 there too)

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by providing the carton and manipulatives for kids to play around with and leave out the number writing. You could write the numbers for your child or could even provide number stickers or magnetic numbers for them to find the corresponding number to amount.

- Extend this activity by challenging children to find every combination they can with 2 colours. Have them guess before making. Children can also make their own number 10 representation poster. 

Try adding an extra colour. What combinations can be made then?

- Mix it up by using playdough to mold egg shapes  instead of using pompoms or buttons etc

- To learn new skills and to consolidate their understanding, children need to experience opportunities to practice these skills over and over again. Repeat this activity with different colours, manipulatives etc.

- You don't have to use pompoms. Whatever you have available, so long as you have at least 10 of each colour, is fine!

- Here is a previous fun maths activity we shared using Egg Cartons. Click the picture to go to the post.

- Don't forget to pop over to The Imagination Tree to see their Egg Carton Maths activity from this week and be sure to stop back next week as together we bring you another 2 fun Playful Maths activities with Egg Cartons.

Happy playing,

Debs :)

-----------------------------------

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