Cupcake Game

I had problems getting a good picture of this game, so I hope I can explain it well enough that you can follow along.  Here goes.   Someone had given me a large plastic cupcake container from the store.  I put a dollop of paint in each hole (one color at a time as we had to rinse our paint brushes in between each color) and the kids painted the bottom of each cupcake circle (don't skimp on the paint or it will flake off).  Next, I used a hot glue gun and glued the plastic cup cake carrier to the base of the container (its black in the picture).  After it was dry I used a permanent marker and to write a number in between the cup cakes.  Then I put in two rubber bouncy balls.  I chose a larger one and a smaller one, but you could use two different colored ones instead, but they must be different.  Lastly, I hot glued the lid on. 

How the game is played:  The youngest child decided which ball he will use and then the older child goes first.  She shakes the game thus moving the balls around.  Each player must then decided which number they want to use (because some of the holes have 4 numbers around it; touching it) and then the second player decides which number he will use.  The person with the highest number wins that round and the game proceeds on.  

My kids really enjoyed this game because of the fun of shaking the container (movement) and the noise it made!  My kids needed help reading the numbers and knowing their options but older kids will figure it out and be able to do it on their own.

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake

This is a simple activity, but can be as indepth as you want depending upon the amount of time you have available.  To prepare I went online and printed out pictures of cupcakes.  I always print things for lessons on cardstock because it holds up better and then I get it laminated.  It cost a little more, but it will hold up much better.  There were tons of options online (all I did was type in "pictures of cupcakes"), but I only printed pictures that contained a specific number of cupcakes (one cupcake, two cupcakes, etc).  Then in either Word or Excel type up number cards to match. Even though toddlers can't read yet I still include the number word beneath the digit so they are exposed to the print.  After reading the book "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" by Laura Joffe Numeroff, I gave the children the pictures and number cards and explained the process to them.  I only had to demonstrate with the first one for them to catch on.  You can see in the above picture how the numeral one card was matched to the picture of one cupcake.  I was pleased when, on her own, Lillian picked up the number cards and said "we can put these in order" and started putting them in numeric order (as you see below).  It's important to give kids the freedom to explore activities like this on their own so they can come up with new twist like this too.   As I mentioned earlier, this activitiy has many extensions you could do; do some activities with the letter C, color a cat or cupcake picture, sorting (these cupcakes have blue in them these do not or these have animals, etc), add two groups of cupcakes together and, the most obvious, make cupcakes!