By Cathy James on June 12th, 2013% When you’re working on math with younger children it’s really important to start with real things – objects they can hold in their hands and use as they play and work with mathematical ideas. They need to have a solid understanding of the concept that a written down ’1′ actually means one car, or one block, or one bottle top. Using toys and other items as manipulatives is great to help them understand this, and adding in new manipulatives every so often keeps the math games fun and interesting. So today, here’s an idea for a really quick-to-make set of DIY manipulatives, and lots of ideas for how you might use them.

Math games with circles Read more »
By Cathy James on May 31st, 2013% Please welcome another of our super guest writers to NurtureStore. Today Stephanie from Twodaloo is bringing us a gorgeous toddler craft idea where the process of making it is just a fabulous as the finished product: a wonderful toddler-created clay pot garden sculpture.

Toddler crafts :: garden sculpture Read more »
By Cathy James on May 21st, 2013% Do your kids love Lego? Just manipulating the pieces, snapping them together and pulling them apart is a great work out for fingers, helping to develop fine-motor skills, but Lego is a classic open-ended toy that can be used in so many different ways by creative kids. My girls most often use their Lego to build imaginary buildings or enclosures for their toy animals but recently L has been using them in lot of math games.

By Cathy James on May 6th, 2013% This week we decided to make a house -warming card for the girls’ aunt and uncle – a great way to play with maths and make some shape pictures! My daughter loved this activity and was so pleased to make something to give as a gift. And all the while she was happily creating her picture, she was learning all sorts of important maths and literacy skills, without even realising it. Here’s how we made our shape picture…

Make a house :: shape pictures Read more »

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