NurtureStore » Maths

Lego math games

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:28:15 +0000

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.

Lego math games

Building chains of Lego in repeating patterns, with the same sequence of colours going along the line, is very good mathematical patterning and are early steps towards addition and times tables. L loves spotting repeating pattens and she’s started to add more complex elements to the patterns she joins together. Last week she presented me with this symmetrical combination of Lego and we decided to build this into a matching game.

Lego symmetry challenge

We took it in turns to build half a picture and then see if the other person could complete it. This is a butterfly but you can just make patterns rather than specific pictures. You can make this as simple or complex as you like, to suit your child’s level – and I bet they’ll try and make the pattern you have to complete as difficult as possible!

Make sure you have enough spare Lego blocks to complete the other side of the pattern and then see how long it takes you to find all the right pieces. This lets you play and learn, working with ideas about colour, shape, size and orientation.

More lego math games

There are lots of fun ways to use Lego for maths games. You could…

:: use lego to measure and graph your results

:: use lego to add and subtract

:: use lego to classify and sort colours

:: use lego to follow patterns and shapes

How do you use lego for math play? Share an idea with us in the comments.

Art for kids: paint play

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:00:18 +0000

Art for kids can be hands on fun with the simplest of ingredients. My girls find it so hard to resist putting their hands in the paint, so why not encourage it and let them enjoy some sensory play. Try these suggestions to add in some maths and literacy play too.

We use pieces of card for this hands-on art, as paper will likely fall apart. We used washable ready-mixed poster paint as we wanted the paint to easily clean off everyone’s hands when we’d finished. We covered the table, floor and the kids’ clothes, and then we could all relax about getting a little mess and enjoy ourselves. If this is still a messy step to far for either you or your children – as not all kids like to put their hands right in – you could try putting the paint (or use hair gel and some colouring) inside a zip-lock bag. You’ll still be able to create patterns but have a lot less to tidy up afterwards.

Letting your children free-form patterns in the paint encourages them to explore the texture and see what they can create. My daughter was humming away to herself as she drew: happy, relaxed and thinking.

You could try making some pre-writing marks in the paint, copying the shapes which appear in many of our letters: curls, circles and lines.

See which mathematical shapes you can make: try circles, squares and stars.

Making spirals that increase and decrease in size is great for hand-eye co-ordination.

Or put on some music and see what patterns you an make to match the sounds you hear.

More art for kids

If you’d like to try some different art for kids, watch out for our Kids Art Explorers announcement on Thursday – it’ll be about painting with a difference!

How to make a weather station

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:52:58 +0000

When she wakes up in the morning L likes to check the weather app on my phone to see what’s forecast for the day. I think she likes the animated visual of the rain or the shining sun but she’s also interested in the temperature. We haven’t had such a cold winter this year but there have been a few days when the temperature has dipped below zero and L is fascinated that something can be less than nothing.

We decided we’d investigate further and try to make our own weather station to check if the weather forecasters on the phone get it right. There are few different ways the children can be involved in setting this up and you can decide whether you want to looking at the sky, the wind, the temperature or the rain. A weather station project also gives you lots of scope to include many different aspects of learning: observation, recording data, graphing, guessing and estimating, taking notes and translating results in to real-life consequences.

Our project is part of the Weather Blog Hop which is linking many kid blogs around the world to bring you all sorts of weather ideas you can use with your children – science, art, games, activities, you name it, we’ve got it! Have a browse through the links at the end of this post for lots of ideas. If you have a weather idea you would like to share please feel free to add it to the linky too.

How to make a weather station

The purpose of our rain gauge was to set up an experiment to compare results and to be able to graph them – and the results were a big surprise for the children. When we set the rain gauge up I let the children lead and find a bottle they thought would be a good size. They were sure that on a very rainy day the bottle would be filled to overflowing! It was surprising to them to discover that a day that soaks the garden (and all the washing on the line!) actually only gave them half a centimetre of rain in their bottle.

How to make a rain gauge

1. Find a bottle with straight sides and cut off the top

2. Use a ruler and a permanent marker to mark off a scale

3. Superglue the cut-off top of the bottle upside down on the base of the bottle. This allows you to push the rain gauge down into some soil in your garden so the bottle doesn’t topple over or blow away

4. Check your rain gauge every morning and see how much rain has filled your bottle. Record your results on a bar chart. Empty all the rain out of the bottle and replace it so you can measure how much falls the next day

What children can learn: how to set up a simple experiment, how to measure data, how to record data, that things don’t always turn out as expected

Weather station observation chart

1. We printed off a What colour is the sky?‘ chart

2. Each morning we looked at the sky to see what the weather was like that day. We tried to find exactly the right pen, pencil or crayon to colour in that day’s box on the chart so it looked just like the sky outside. (Sadly,we needed lots of grey.) We added in cotton wool clouds if there were any and looked up the names of different cloud formations. This made a patchwork picture of the weather for us.

What children can learn: observation skills, that the weather changes day by day, how ‘blue’ can be all sorts of shades, that clouds can be all different shapes and sizes and have special scientific names, that observing nature can translate into art.

What Should I Wear? chart

What do changes in the weather actually mean to young children? To translate our observations into something relevant to their experiences we set up a ‘What should I wear?’ chart.

1. Create a tall chart showing different types of clothing your child might wear – you can draw them or take photos of your children’s actual clothes.

2. Sequence your clothing pictures from hot to cold. It could look something like this: sunhat, t-shirt, long sleeved top, extra vest, rain coat, winter coat, woolly hat, scarf and gloves, snow boots.

3. Cut out a big arrow and stick it to a clothes peg. Once you have completed your Weather Station Observation Chart for the day ask you child to think about what the weather means for what they need to wear that day. Peg your arrow marker to the right stage of your ‘What Should I wear’ chart, then go and get dressed and head out to play in the fresh air!

Have you ever tried to make a weather station with your children? What else would you add to our ideas?

Join the Weather Blog Hop

The Weather Blog Hop is co-hosted by all these blogs: sharing your great ideas far and wide! Please add you own link and join the fun.

NurtureStore :: The Golden Gleam :: Rainy Day Mum :: Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Putti Prapancha :: Sun Hats & Wellie Boots :: Montessori Tidbits :: Kitchen Counter Chronicles

Reading Confetti :: Dilly-Dali Art :: Growing A Jeweled Rose :: The Iowa Farmer’s Wife

AngeliqueFelix.com :: Kindergarten Basics :: Mommy With A Selective Memory

Glittering Muffins :: Creative Family Fun :: Living Montessori Now :: Toddler Approved

Living at the Whitehead’s Zoo :: Sense of Wonder :: Make, Do & Friend :: Creative Connections for Kids

The Educators’ Spin On It :: RainbowsWithinReach :: A Mom With A Lesson Plan :: Creativity my Passion

Mama Smiles :: Teach Preschool :: JDaniel4′s Mom :: The Outlaw Mom Blog :: Mama Mia’s Heart2Heart :: :: Mindful Meanderings

Playdough and cocktail sticks

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:54:20 +0000

Many of the play ideas I post here happen as a result of my children taking some everyday materials and experimenting. Having a well stocked making box (which really doesn’t mean lots of expensive art materials) and permission to help themselves to some of our kitchen supplies often leads to all sorts of creativity and learning. Today’s post is an example of how a fusion of two materials can produce lots of thinking about maths, dimensions, construction, creativity, roleplay and of course plenty of fun.

Play dough and cocktail sticks

You know we use play dough at lot in our house. I think it might just be the one play material we’d pick above all others. We’ve played with it week in week out for almost nine years! I’ve talked before about how much learning can be included in playdough play but the key thing to get the most from it is to mix things up a little. In my Let’s Play Dough e-book (which you can download for free, just click on the link) I’ve given you a list of 52 different materials to combine with your dough – so if you want, you can have a whole year’s worth of new play dough experiences. Take a look and see if there’s something there you’ve never used.

This week we’ve been mixing things up by adding cocktail sticks to our playdough. If you saw our Mad Hatter’s Tea Party you’ll know the cocktail sticks were intended to make an edible hedgehog – but B knows a great playdough idea when she sees one!

She wondered if the playdough would work as a ‘glue’ to hold the cocktail sticks together – and look what happened.

Triangles and squares began to appear – and lots of wondering and experimenting started happening. Could you make it bigger? Could you mix different shapes together? Could you build up?

L was playing along to, and she discovered the cocktail sticks give your playdough extra strength, to build tall strong creatures…

and re-inforced homes for them to live in.

Mix up your play dough

Are you playing with play dough this week? What could you add in to give your children a different experience this time?

If you’ve already tried playdough with cocktail sticks maybe you could try twigs, straws, art , shells or candles?

happily shared with link and learn

Painted Christmas wreath

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:00:20 +0000

The children had so much fun making this painted Christmas wreath. I like the mix of the traditional decoration with the vibrant colours the kids chose. Here’s how they made it.

How to make a painted Christmas wreath

We started by printing lots and lots of circles on to pieces of card. We used our set of stacking cups to print with, which were really easy for the children to hold and gave us a variety of sizes. We used washable paint so we could clean up the cups afterwards.

Once we’d finished the stamping fun and everything had dried we used the same cups to draw lots of circles on the painted card and cut them out.

We used a paper plate as the frame for the wreath, with the centre removed.

You know my kids have an issue with waiting for glue to dry, so we stapled all the circles in place around the paper plate ring.

We added some shiny ribbon for extra pizzazz and ta-da, our painted Christmas wreath is ready.

More Christmas crafts

If you like this painted Christmas wreath you might also like our other Christmas craft ideas.

happily shared with it’s playtime