Category Archives: Math

Spell, Listen & Count for Fun!

This week has flown by and so much has happened in such a short amount of time. To start, the family and I are getting over Montezuma’s Revenge. I was hit the hardest. Thankfully, I’m feeling sooooo much better and so is everyone else. It started with food poisoning from an Ethiopian Restaurant but my stomach ache was compounded by a bad veggie patty from a Subway.

Amira’s sniffles have subsided, so I finally put her in her crib for the first time. We’ve been co-sleeping since she grew out of her bassinet. She literally started kicking me out of the bed and sleep became unproductive for the both of us. So it was time. Yay! She adjusted with a hitch. No wailing. A few whimpers, but that was to settle herself in before going to sleep. What a tremendous blessing! I think my early experience with A.J. sort of scared me, but after I was consistent, he adjusted well too.

Here are a few pictures of Amira playing and joining in on the fun A.J. and I have when we play and learn. As you can see, she can now put herself into a crawling position. AmiracrawlSince this month’s theme is “All About Me.” We spent time reinforcing how to spell A.J.’s full name. It was easy for him to learn how to spell his names, but adding the letters in the proper order provided another learning opportunity.Feltname

We’re always counting, so I found this cool balloon hunt activity from The Activity Mom’s site that I modified and played with A.J. He loved it so much that he would scream each time he found a balloon. I simply hid the numbered balloons. Each time he found one he had to put it in the proper clear bin. To make it easier, as finding the balloons were challenging enough, I put the numbered bottled caps in the tops of each bin.Balloon HuntAnother counting activity that we did combined fine motor skills work.CountthebeadsWe are also learning about the senses and for a listening activity I placed bells inside of eggs and had him shake them to see if he could tell which egg had the most bells, or which egg was the loudest. Then he ordered them from loudest to softest. Amira shook the eggs, too!EggbellsI still have some wonderful adventures to post about, but I will have to do it sometime this week. Thanks for reading my blog and I hope that if you find any activities that you think other parents may enjoy doing with their little one, by all means share this post and my blog!

Oh, by the way…I surpassed 5,000 views on my blog! Yippee! This is just the beginning! Congratulations to me!

What other fun counting games have you played recently?

Pray, Persist & Prosper!

-Asia

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Measuring for Fun Learning

Measuringmeasuring2 A.J. was literally tickled to have the outline of his foot, hand, and body traced. Since he recognizes numbers, he can tell me the length of what is being measured. He may not have understood fully what he was doing, but this was a good introduction to measuring.

I know this because the following day after doing the measuring activity, a little girl brought a tape measure for Show and Tell at the Library. When A.J. saw the tape measure, he got so excited because he had just used one. I love synchronistic moments like this!!

A.J. also presented at Show and Tell this week. The first time he presented, he showed two of his bowling pins and little bowling ball. He rolled the ball and actually knocked a pin. Yesterday, he showed his ManMan puppet that we bought from the Center for Puppetry Arts. (He named his puppet after his friend Emmanuel. It’s hard for him to say Emmanuel, so he calls him ManMan. Now we do, too!)

A.J’s been interested in creating puppet shows at home since attending his first puppet show. Check out our homemade puppet theatre.

Currently, his puppet shows are of him singing, dancing and speaking really fast about his day. I need to video tape him performing a show. I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of seeing it later down the road.IMG_2153I have two questions for you today. What fun items have you measured lately? And what has your child presented at a Show and Tell?

Pray, Persist and Prosper!

-Asia

Homemade Addition Board

Simplediceaddition

We do a lot of counting and pre-math around here so I decided to start some simple addition using items I already had on hand. A.J. has tons of blocks so I took two and turned them into numbered dice. I used bottle caps that I already numbered for the answer after the equal sign and bears for the manipulatives.

A.J. likes to simply play with the bears, too.

100_2787

A.J. is learning about order, by putting the numbers in order.100_2802

We are also playing more with shapes. I bought a shape sorter to help A.J. with identifying 3-dimensional shapes. I think that’s the term for it. Anyway, he needs to practice putting matching the shapes and putting them in the correct way, which is a bit challenging for him.

Shapesorter

What creative ways do you use to teach simple addition?

Pray, Persist & Prosper!

-Asia

Creative Counting Games and more…

PreschoolcountinggamesIt’s hard to believe that February has come to an end! There are several items still on my todo list that I simply will have to move to March. But don’t worry, I’ll still get them done and will share them in due time.

For now, here are the three counting games that we did over the last couple of weeks.

1. Using bottle caps A.J. matched the numbers 20-30. Because I have different shapes and colors, I could also change the activity to have him match the colors and/or shapes.

2. Again, using bottle caps I placed three numbers in a muffin tin and A.J. had to put the correct numbers of hearts in each bin.

3. A.J. counted hearts on pipe cleaners and used foam numbers to put under the correct number of hearts.

Countthehearts

Parenthood is a funny thing. There are moments of bliss, periods of sheer chaos and everything in between. On my birthday, A.J. had a tantrum that lasted about an hour or so. It was other wordly. Then yesterday, as I was tucking him in for his nap he asked me to pray with him. Prayer plus nap equals bliss! So in spite of the turbulence we experience as parents moments like this make it all worth it!

This month, A.J. had an opportunity to meet Sonny Emory. Thanks to Dr. Clint Carter and Steve Michaels who told me about the event! I wouldn’t have this picture if it weren’t for Steve. I was in the back of the auditorium nursing Amira when A.J. met Mr. Emory.

AJ ans Sonny2

Other heart centered ideas…Listeningtomyheart

Family loveNext month I will do a better job sharing about the books we are reading and the songs/finger plays that we are singing. I’d better wrap-up this post. We’re going to see Mighty Bugs at the Center for Puppetry Arts later this morning. So, until next time my Loves!

OHHHH…one more thing… My parents came to visit. Here are some lovely pics from their visit.

How did you celebrate the month of LOVE?

Pray, Persist & Prosper

-Asia

7 Brain Boosters for Tots (Part 1)

I love playing with A.J. and seeing him engaged in activities. Besides drumming, he gets a kick out of putting items inside of things (like the garbage can.) While a muffin tin doesn’t have a lid, I added the Muffin Tin Matching game to his shelf along with a lock and key. Also on his shelf is a numeral recognition matching game to help boost his brain power and fun quotient!

Muffin Tin Matching- I found some red and green Christmas bells at the dollar store that I thought would be perfect for this game. A.J. loves the sounds the bells make, especially when they clink against the tin. I have several pattern combinations that are printed. A.J. actually followed a pattern, but I think this was by accident. When I changed the pattern, he was still focused on the joy of putting the bells in the order that came to his mind. He understood the one to one correspondence and was happy to put them in and dump them out to start again.

He wanted his stuffed animals to watch and learn, too!

Lock and Key – Every time A.J. sees me with keys, he wants to play with them. He tries to insert them into car doors or keys holes on doors in the house. I bought a simple lock and key for him to play with and it was a hit. Although he was able to get the key into the lock, he is working on strength to turn his wrist.

His focus was completely on the lock. This engaging activity is improving his concentration.

A.J. was inspired to add playing with his lock box, which has several different types of closures for kids to play with.

Numeral Counting – I called out the numbers, which actually goes up to ten, but in this particular session we focused on 1-5.

Pointing to objects is exciting. I ask him to repeat after me so that he can learn as he explores.

At first he was using his drum sticks to point to the numbers.

Stay tuned for Part II of this post. What fun learning explorations are engaging to your tot right now?

Pray, Persist, & Prosper