As a mom and former PreK teacher, I really love sitting down with my kids and doing fun educational activities together. Whether it's through the use of toys, manipulatives or other activities I have on hand (many of which are from my teaching years), I enjoy seeing them explore, discover and learn new things daily! I thought it would be fun to share some of the activities we do together here on my blog each week...and hopefully you will share ideas as well!
My 4 year old loves to learn. She enjoys the time we spend together daily doing different activities...especially those dealing with letters and numbers. One day last week she said, "Mom, can we do math?". We do many different activities with numbers, counting, sorting, one-to-one correspondence, etc... but most recently she has been interested in simple addition. As I thought about what we could do that day, I decided to pull out a bag of popsicle sticks. I had come across this neat idea on Pinterest and decided to simplify it to a level Kaelyn could easily do and understand.
On each stick I wrote numbers (including one stick with an addition sign and one with an equal sign). I then put the corresponding number of dots along the length of each stick to make counting/adding easier for her. She began by grabbing two numbers and counting the dots on each one to find how many total dots there were. Once she had figured out the total by counting them together, she found that number stick and placed it after the equal sign. It was a very simple, yet a fun and educational way to work on addition with her. It has been great for number recognition, counting, and more!
She also likes to take the sticks and place them in order from least to greatest as she counts.
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Cute Idea!
Clever for homeschooling! I'll pin it and keep it in mind!
That's a great idea.
I also made similar sticks but glued split peas by count. This way my daughter was actually "feeling" every dot when counting.