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! :)