Letters and numbers are more fun with trucks

I thought I'd share two days worth of school time here where I decided that we'd use our beloved trucks to make it feel just like we were playing.  High-interest stuff always brings on the best learning for us. :)

On day 1, I had these letter cards that I found as a freebie on teachers pay teachers.  I cannot think of the link off-hand, but if you really want them, I'll sure try to dig it up off of my work computer for you.  Letter flash cards or actual objects would work just as well. 
I laid out the letter cards at one end of our living room floor.  I only put out 6--we are working on beginning sounds (Jack) so 26 cards would be a little overwhelming!  I put the 6 letters that matched the beginning sounds of these pictures on the floor across the living room.  We looked at the letters together and named them, and then I let them each take one at a time and put it into their dump truck, roll it across the living room and find the correct picture to place the letter on.  They loved it.  They kept asking for more and more until we had done all of the letter cards!  Here are some pictures to explain a little better how this went.

Here are their trucks--3 to choose from to try to cut down on the fighting... and the letters.  They chose one letter at a time, stuck it in the back of their trucks and drove them across the living room.

 

On day 2, I decided to carry forward the truck theme with another freebie I found via Pinterest.  You can access the truck pattern here: http://www.themeasuredmom.com/printable-counting-mat-fill-the-dump-truck/

 

PS--this activity ended after about 10 blissful minutes with fighting over the trucks and the toddler screaming about Jack taking all of his letters.

 

I thought we would have more fun with this job if I put their numbers (1-5 for Harry and 6-20 for Jack) in their own individual trucks so they could draw out of their instead of a pile.  I chose to have them fill their dump trucks with Legos, and put them in a big truck for them to dig out.  I tried to work with Harry on identifying those numbers 1-5, but he was just so excited to put Legos on the mat that it was difficult to get him to understand the one-to-one counting.  Jack could do this independently, so this was mostly about working with Harry--with limited success. :) But we had fun!

 

 

The set-up: a mat and truck full of numbers for each with Legos to share.

 

 

 PS--this activity ended after 10 minutes of bliss with fighting over trucks and the toddler screaming about Jack taking all of his Legos. Ugh. 

Let me know if you try it and have fun with trucks, too!

Fun With Numbers

We've had an eventful few weeks with family visiting and being away from home.  We've kind of gotten away from our regular "summer schedule" and have all really missed the predictability and fast pace of a well-planned day.  I made sure to be intentional about getting back on track this week, and I'm glad because this family is just much happier with a little structure to our day.

I usually do school time during the late morning, after our morning play time and snack.  Today, I moved it to after lunch, and I was pretty happy with this.  It was a nice segue into a library trip, reading time, and quiet time.  We worked on some number sense stuff today, but I included two days of number stuff in this post, just for fun. 

Set matching:

Two of my favorite set matching activities that we have done lately are here below. 

Jack's favorite is the bingo dauber activity, for sure.  I got these bingo daubers at Target.  They're not as big and bright as the ones I order and use at work, but they're much less expensive and fun for using at home!  I used a 1-6 dice and also a dice that has different colors on each side.  You wouldn't have to use the colored dice, since it's not something most people just have laying around.  Jack had to roll both dice and then use a bingo dauber to fill up a paper with the right number and color.  So, if he rolled 3 and yellow, he would make 3 yellow dots.  If he rolled 6 and blue, he would make 6 blue dots. (Without the colored dice, I would have just let him pick any color.)
Harry also did this activity.  Harry cannot set match, and has no impulse control.  So, for this one, he would roll a color and a number.  He would (sometimes accurately, sometimes not) tell me the number and color, and then proceed to pick his favorite color and just bingo daub to his hearts' content.  Even if he knew it was 5,  he doesn't yet understand that he needs to stop at 5.  If you wanted to work on set matching with a toddler, I would imagine you would have to do this hand-over-hand.  It was just too far above him, he just wanted to have fun using his favorite color.  Have at it, Harry. :)

Tossing the dice



Making the right number of blue dots

My other set matching activity used a 12 sided dice (you could use two regular dice--or just one, if you only wanted to work with numbers 1-6), a pipe cleaner, and beads.  Jack had to roll the dice and choose the correct number of beads to add to his pipe cleaner (fine motor work, as well).  He just kept rolling and stringing on the number of beads that he rolled until it was full.

 



Harry also did this activity, in his own way.  He wanted to put "A LOT" on like Jack, and I was super happy with him for sitting intently and giving it a whirl for a while.  He rolled the dice a few times and would say some of the numbers he rolled, but just strung on beads, which is a very tough fine motor task for a little guy. 

Number identification and sequence:

We used that 12 sided dice again for this and decided that if you rolled an 11 or 12, you lost your turn.  I made a little table of numbers 1-10 on the dry-erase board and set out the magnetic numbers scattered on the table.  We took turns rolling the dice and if we rolled a number that was needed in the table, we got to put it in there.  Harrison was "done" at this point, but I wish he would have done this one with us.  I think he would have been able to match the numbers with the visual cues. 

 

Now that we are back on schedule, it's the weekend!  Oh, well!  We tried! :)