kids activities, art and craft, play dough recipes and more
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…
Welcome to day three of our special series that’s Just Right For Toddlers. We’ve already looked at sensory play and arts and crafts, and today our focus is on math games. All our ideas are based on learning through play and math is no exception. We don’t need to try and sit toddlers down at a table and fill in worksheets, when we can explore the same math concepts through games, play and everyday activities.
In these toddler activities we’re looking at learning to count and recognise numbers. We’ve also got ideas that explore shapes and measuring, matching and sorting.
Here’s a kids art idea that you can try at home using recycled items that you’d otherwise throw away – we’re up-cycling and exploring texture to make touchy feeling patchwork pictures.
Teaching children fractions is easy in the kitchen as meal times are when we apply fractions to our everyday lives. Whether we realise it or not every time we make sandwiches, cut up a cake or share out slices of pizza we’re using fractions. Here are some ideas you can use with children to introduce fractions in a fun and practical way, so that when they come to ‘learn’ fractions at school they’ll already be familiar and confident with the underlying principles.
How to Throw a Fractions Tea Party
Including talk about maths in your everyday play and activities gives your child lots of opportunity to play about with concepts, so that when they come to study them in a more academic way they already have the beginning of an understanding of the principles, and they will feel comfortable and confident in approaching maths.
All our favourite literacy and math activities, all in one place :: download our ABCs and 123s guide here.
Did you see the marble painting we did yesterday? It was great roly-poly fun and we decided that instead of just adding to our picture gallery we would use the designs to make a shape garland.
We had lots of chat about which shapes we would use and decided to stick with circles, squares and triangles, as the children would find them fairly easy to cut out themselves.
We went on a shape hunt to find objects the right shape and size to draw round and then we cut them out.
We used our fingers to trace round the outside of the shapes and count how many sides they had.
We did some shape sorting, making piles of circles, triangles and squares.
We talked about size and lined each shape up from biggest to smallest.
Then we used sticky tape to fasten our shapes onto thread and hung up our garland to decorate our room. The mobile looks beautiful as it twirls around.
That’s a lot of fun learning from one simple activity. How do you teach shapes to your children?
If you’re looking for play-based exploration and discovery of math and science concepts, come and take a look at our Fizz, Pop, Bang! Playful Science and Math Activities.
And for more math-meets art resources, join my ART of CIRCLES workshop.
What? Repeating patterns are everywhere: in fabric designs, buildings in your neighbourhood, in the songs that you sing. Any sequence of colours, shapes, actions that repeact twice or more become a repeating pattern.
Why? So what have repeating patterns got to do with your children’s play? Well, by looking out for patterns and including them in your play you’re giving your child the opportunity to develop important mathematical thinking. Many maths concepts are based on patterns, such as addition, times tables and geometry.
How? Children often make their own patterns as they play with bottle tops or building blocks but here are some ideas you can use to let your child explore repeating patterns:
Pre-school maths isn’t just about counting – why not try one of these pattern ideas today?
Take a look at our resources for creative science and math activities.
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.
All our favourite literacy and math activities, all in one place :: download our ABCs and 123s guide here.