Placemats

When the kids were younger I used place mats with the ABC's or shapes on them.  Last week I found one with addition facts on it.  Lillian has enjoyed using it.  I just leave it sitting in the middle of the table.  When she's in the mood she'll quiz us on the math facts, other times she'll read us the problem, and sometimes she wants us to ask her some of them.  This exposes her to addition facts, how to read a table, and how to read the equations.  We don't push it at all; its her instigating it and choosing to play with it.  If you have a play kitchen the kids enjoy using the place mats in there also.  In addition, sometimes when Lillian is wanting to write a word and has asked how to make a letter, I will get out our letter place mat so I can show her the letter on the place mat, model how it is written, and then she writes the letter.  The mats are a good learning tool and are usually only about $3.

Addition Dice Game

This evening Lillian and I played a very simple dice game together.  I got out two regular dice for us to use.  We took turns rolling the dice and then adding the dots on the two dice up.  Sometimes she knew the answer by looking, other times she counted on her fingers, and sometimes she counted the dots on the dice to come up with the answer.  All of these solutions are perfectly fine.  A couple times we rolled two even numbers, so after coming up with the answer, I pointed out that we could count by two's and still come up with the same answer. She enjoyed the game and we played it for about 10 minutes.  At this age (5 years old now), most activities will be short due to their short attention span and that is ok too!  I loved that their wasn't any prep required and that the only supplies needed were two dice.    An idea for an extension or older child: after playing the game a few times so they could get the hang of it, they could make a tally sheet/graph as the game is played so they could see what sum came up the most!

Marbles, Marbles everywhere

Cole has been especially interested in playing with marbles lately.  Obviously you wouldn't give marbles to someone young or a child who puts things in his mouth, but luckily I don't have that problem with him.  As he's playing with them he is learning. For instance, he hauls them around in his semi and likes to stop and start quickly and move the semi quickly to see how they roll and the noises they make.  He also likes to put them in his dump truck; however, since it doesn't have a tailgate the marbles wouldn't stay in.  So  1 row of duct tape on the back of the truck was added to hold the marbles in.  He discovered that most the marbles stayed in but if he was going fast he lost some, so a second row of duct tape was added - problem solved!  Other times the marbles are used in the play kitchen and they are discovering that different size containers hold different amounts.  Granted, at times I get tired of finding a marble here and there and sometimes they get dumped and are everywhere.  When I get tired of them they will disappear for awhile!

A is for Animals

This was an activity I did with both children at the same time.  I have some animal magnets that I used, but you wouldn't have to use magnets; even just pictures of animals would work fine.  After putting all the animals on the refrigerator we took turns asking questions about them.  For instance:  "each of you find an animal that has stripes, what is the tallest/smallest/biggest animal, what animal lives in water".  We also talked about the sounds they make and how they move.  From the age of 4 or 5 your child can also tell you the letter each animals name starts with and write it down.