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Bean bag games

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Have some fun with bean bags!

We have four colours of bean bags so we chose four coloured chalks to match.  We drew four different shapes and numbered them 1 to 4. Then it was time to play.

Have a go at colour matching – can you throw the blue bean bag into the blue shape?

Have a go with numbers – can you throw a bean bag onto the number 1? onto the number 2?

 

 

Have a go with shapes – can you throw all the bean bags into the circle?

 

 

With older children you can let them throw at the targets and add up the scores as you go along.

Sponge painting shapes

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Here’s  a quick idea you could try to explore shapes with your child.

Take a kitchen washing-up sponge and cut it into different shapes using some scissors. We made rectangles, squares and triangles. Talk with your child about the shapes: How many sides do they have? What are they called? Can they see anything in the room the same shape? What pictures could you make with the shapes?

Then place some paint onto a shallow dish and show your child how you can dip a sponge shapes into the paint and then press it on to a piece of paper to make a print. Have fun experimenting to see what you can create… a house, a train, a spaceship?

Ducks: number line, song vlog, painting

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If you’re trying to nurture a new skill in a child I think you should always take your cue from them. Think about what they love and enjoy and use this as the medium to teach the lesson. Little currently adores ducks. She got a little yellow duck in a party loot bag which is accompanying her everywhere – and she quite likes ‘being’ a duck herself. She’s also very interested in numbers – a skill which I’m keen for her to practise. Today she wanted to do some painting so, to encourage those numbers, we decided to make a duck number line.

I’ve blogged about number lines before and I think they’re a really useful way to incorporate written numbers into your child’s environment. Ours is strung along the kitchen window – a prominent position so Little is often looking at it. We refer to it most days, for example when we’re counting out spoons to set the table, so we’re gently reinforcing the number progression and linking the physical number of spoons with the written number symbols on the line. Of course, once things have been on display for a while they become a little stale and you walk past without noticing so I like to change the pictures on the number line to keep it interesting for Little. We’ve previously done ladybirds, autumn leaves and Christmas trees.

To make a duck number line: I cut out some duck shapes from pieces of card and Little set about paining them. Let you child be creative here and paint them any colour they like. Little was quite clear that she wanted pink and yellow ducks – so who am I to argue! Holding the paintbrush is good motor skill practice and the mark-making aspect paves the way for later writing. You can see from the vlog that she can’t resist swirling all her paints together – more experimenting.

Once the ducks were dry Little added eyes and numbers using a felt pen. She was determined to write the numbers herself so I encouraged her to have a try – are you impressed with how well she did them? As one reason for making the number line is to have her see the (correct) written form of the numbers I added a small (correct) version of each numeral too – careful not to make Little think that her version was in anyway not good enough.

Children learn in a multi-sensory way and adding other experiences to a lesson re-inforces what you’re teaching – so why not add in some song while you’re painting and counting. Hope you like her rendition of Five Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day!

We’re going to extend the play with ducks by adding them to the bathwater tonight – so Little can enjoy some small-world role play. And tomorrow we’re off to feed the ducks at the local pond – so she can learn about the real world and see some ducks in action.

And just in case you don’t know all the words and would like to sing with your child, the lyrics are here. If you’re not painting, you should hold up the corresponding number of fingers, and swim them off like the little ducks:

5 little ducks went swimming one day,

over the pond and far away,

when mummy duck said ‘quack, quack, quack, quack’

only 4 little ducks came back.

(and so on, until – in a sad voice- …

no little ducks went swimming one day,

over the pond and far away,

when mummy duck said ‘quack, quack, quack, quack’

ALL THE 5 LITTLE DUCKS CAME BACK!

Train inspired pre-reading and maths puzzles

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These two ideas wrap up our week of trains, trains and more trains.

Idea One is to make a Sorting Train.

I’ve seen lots of lovely train sets available in shops but my daughter specifically wanted one which had open carriages  so she could take her toys for a ride, so we made our own. We used plastic box containers from the recycling bin for the carriages and attached them together with string – very simple, but just what she wanted. She loaded the train with her toy passengers and played with the train in this way for a while. We have open shelving in the playroom to encourage the children to be creative and grab their own props when they’re playing, and today the wooden blocks were chosen. I asked my daughter if she could sort the blocks into the carriages by colour – which you can see she did. This classification ability – being able to sort objects into groups, be it by colour, size, purpose – is actually a pre-reading skill. It encourages logical thinking and helps to develop visual discrimination skills. Being able to look at a selection of objects and sort them is a step on the way to looking at a selection of letters and words and being able to read them. Of course, she was just having fun! Once the train was loaded she delivered the different coloured blocks to stations around the room.

We used the wooden blocks again for Idea Two. My daughter enjoyed using felt shapes to make a train picture  yesterday, so I thought I’d make her a ‘matching puzzle‘ using our wooden blocks. On a piece of paper I lay out some blocks to make a train shape and drew round them. Then I coloured them in colours that matched our blocks.

Then I asked my daughter if she could use the tub of blocks to find the right ones to go on top of the paper picture to make a block train.

To do this she had to use lots of maths and pre-reading skills as she had to think about:

– their shape – rectangle or square?

– their size – big rectangle or small rectangle?

– their colour – red semi circle or yellow semi circle?

– their orientation – arch pointing left or right?

You could adapt this puzzle game to the shape of blocks you have and what your child likes. You might make a house picture, a face or even a random pattern. If your child enjoys jigsaws, whiy not give this a try?

Train-inspired art and maths shape pictures

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When you’re nurturing children I think you should always start with them – what they’re interested in and want to explore. At the moment my youngest is really enjoying playing trains, so I’ve been using this as a way to incorporate some ideas about shapes and colours.

Yesterday we made a ride-on train from a cardboard box, which has given us lots of role playing fun. We’ve been talking about what happens at a train station, where you might go on a train and how trains work. This  lead us on to talking about trains going underground, so we looked up a picture of the London Underground map. And wow! She was captured by all the lines and colours, and wanted to know the names of all the stations. She was tracing her finger along the different lines (which is great hand-eye co-ordination practice) and I thought she might like her own map which she could drive her wooden trains along. This turned out to be a great idea as she really enjoyed making her version of the map.


We used a long roll of paper and it was great for her to have the space to really extend her painting. And she knew the names of all the colours too.

Once it was dried we brought over her train set to bring her map to life.

Another way we explored the theme of trains was to make pictures using felt shapes. This gave us the opportunity to name the different shapes, count their sides and trace our fingers around their outlines. We looked at our wooden train to see what shapes it was made up of and then used the felt shapes to re-create the train in our picture – comparing the 3D object with our two dimensional picutre.

I’ve got a couple more train-inspired play ideas coming in the next post too. One helps with pre-reading skills and another is good for maths. Hope you’ll come back and see them.

Recycle your Christmas cards – make a jigsaw and a memory game

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What are you going to do with all your Christmas cards? Three quick ideas to re-use them before they go in the recycling bin…

1. Easiest of all  – simply save them til next year. Stash them away with your Christmas decorations and then come Christmas 2010 you’ll have a pile of cards ready for your children to cut, stick and craft with.

2. Make a memory game. You can make a ‘match the pairs’ game which will help develop your child’s memory and turn-taking skills. This works best with card which are all of a similar size. Depending on the age of the children playing it is probably best to select cards which are distinctive: in the picture above you can see I’ve chosen a card which is mainly white, one which is mainly green, one which is mainly purple , and so on. I’m playing with a 3 yr old so want to give her some fairly easy ones to match together. With older children you can make them more difficult.

Using just the front of each card, cut them in half.

Jumble them up and place them face down on the table or floor.

Now you’re ready to start playing. Player one turns over 2 of the cards. If they match, they can keep the cards. If they don’t match, they have to be turned back over. Player 2 has a go.

Keep alternating turns, collecting any cards which match, until all the pairs have been matched up. They player with the most pairs is the winner.

What you’re encouraging your child to do is develop their visual memory so they can remember when the matching pairs are, so they can turn them over when it’s their turn. Of course, especially with younger children, you can give a few clues to help them – it’s about having fun and developing a skill, rather than getting frustrated because it’s too hard.

3. Alternatively why not make some jigsaws? For young children, this works best with cards which have a recognisble picture rather an abstract design. You’ll see we used a Santa card and a nativity scene.

All you need to do is cut up the card, jumble the pieces and let them jigsaw away to make the picture again (and again and again and again in the case of my currently jigsaw-crazy daughter).

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