Math

Snack Graph

My husband didn’t eat many “Sugar cereals” (as he calls them) when he was a kid. I, on the other hand, ate cinnamon toast crunch, reese’s puffs, fruit loops, and all the tasty stuff on the cereal aisle. So when I brought home “Fruity Cheerios” the other day my husband had a skeptical look on his face when he said “these taste like fruit loops.” So I respond, “Yeah, they’re great right?” And he responded with a comment about it being a sugar cereal, but I disagreed and I still claim that its Cheerios so it can’t be that bad for you.

Anyway, all that to say, in my Kindergarten class I LOVED to graph colorful snacks like fruit loops, gummy bears, colorful goldfish, etc.
So, I made a graph for you so that you can graph your colorful snack, whatever it may be, at home!

Colorful Snack Graph

All you will do is ask your child to take their serving of their snack and see if they can sort the colors into the right columns that line up above the color name. Then, when all the pieces are in place, you can ask your little one some of the following questions…. but some of them might be inappropriate for their level of understanding “number sense” – so dont push it:
– Which color of your snack did you have the most of? How many are there of that color?
– Which color of your snack did you have the least (or the smallest amount) of?
– Were there any colors that had the same/equal amount of that color snack?
– Which colors have more than 5? Less than 10?

The point is to teach your little one how to use and analyze a graph. This is a learning experience for YOU and your little one. You should feel proud of yourself for attempting this because you are introducing your little one to an activity that causes him/her to use higher order thinking skills to navigate his way around this visual data chart that he assembled….pretty advanced for such a young mind huh?

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A Penny For My Thoughts

My computer has had a virus for a week and a half and you would swear I am lost in my own home. We have got to get it fixed…even if it costs us. Speaking of costing us…. today we are gonna talk about MONEY, HONEY.

When I taught kindergarten one of the grade level expectations is that children can identify coins and their values. But coins can be difficult to teach unless you teach them ONE coin at a time. Kids always seem to recognize a quarter because they need quarters to buy candy haha, but the other coins all blend together in their minds. So, when I teach coins I will spend a week or more on each individual coin so that the children can really store and organize the information in their minds.

So, go on a penny hunt today and collect as many as you can and put them in a coin purse or a wallet.  Then write various numbers with the cent sign on post-its and place them on toys in your child’s room or playroom.  First, teach your little one about the penny.  The penny is made of copper and it is worth one cent.  President Lincoln is on the front and the Lincoln memorial is on the back (you can just say “a building.”  In small handwriting you can read the words “one cent.” “When we use pennies we count by ones….let’s count some together.”

  Explain to your little one that you put a pretend price on the toys in the playroom so lets go shopping.  Tell them that you work in the store so if they want to buy anything they need to count out the right number of coins and pay you in exchange for the toy. 

If your little one has already had plenty of practice with the penny, teach him/her about nickels and how to count them by fives, writing all of your value amounts on the post-its in multiples of fives.

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Easter Egg Match

Today I have a cost-efficient activity for all of you frugal moms who are gearing up for Easter and have one too many plastic eggs lying around.

The only materials you will need are the plastic eggs that break apart and a sharpie or other permanent marker. You can also use a dry-erase marker if you want to be able to change what you write on the eggs, but this wipes off easily when handling. If you don’t have any plastic eggs you can find them for super-cheap at The Dollar Tree, Walmart, and almost anywhere around Easter-time. But if I had to guess, some of you saved some eggs in an Easter box from last year because you didn’t want to throw them away.

Take those eggs and write a capital letter on the top half of the egg and a matching lower case letter on the bottom half of the egg. There are two games you can play with your little ones:

The first is to separate all the halves and mix them up and ask them to find the matching letters and connect the eggs.

The second is to fill the eggs with candy or objects around the house that start with that letter. For example, I put a candy egg in the letter “E” egg.

You can vary this activity in many ways to make it age-appropriate for your child: Casey shared the idea to place a letter on the top half of the egg, turn it and write another letter, turn it and write another letter.  Then, write a word ending at the bottom half to see how many words they can make  by turning the top half of the egg (c-at, b-at). Or, you can even write names on the egg and have your child write someone a tiny note and stick it inside of the egg to deliver it to them as an Easter surprise. Be creative and have fun!

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Growth Charts

My good friend Casey specializes in making creative decor and one of my favorite things she makes is growth charts because there are so many opportunities to teach math and science skills. Once you are aware of the skills you can teach it makes “talking it out” with your child so much more of a natural learning experience.

Here are the math skills that are my summaries of kindergarten grade level expectations:

1) Treat the growth chart like a number line: identify the numbers that come before or after a given number or between two numbers.

2) Count forward from a number or backward from a number.

3) Use measurement vocabulary: “feet,” “inches,” “taller,” “shorter,” etc.

And the science skills:

1) Use the chart as a “tool” to measure, observe, and keep information (talk about what you have learned from the tool from previous measurements).

2) Compare the human body at various stages of development with language like “You were shorter 3 months ago when you were younger.”

3) Predict and anticipate possible outcomes “How tall do you think you will be in 3 more months?”

Now, make your own growth chart or order one from Casey! She makes everything customized and personalized!

Check out some of her work:

 

Her latest….butterflies!

Coordinating charts for sisters.

How cool does this kid feel?

LSU theme for two….LOVE!

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Stuffed Animal Overload

I have a very vivid memory of myself as a five year old running into my mom’s room, trying to convince her that I needed to sleep with her because there was just not enough room in my bed.  When she walked me back to my room to see what I was talking about I showed her all 20 of my stuffed animals tucked under my covers too snug to move them.  Of course at that point my mom figured out a way to re-arrange them without completely crushing my hopes that they could all sleep in my bed, but she made sure that I stayed in my own bed. 

I know you might be considering purging your stuffed animal collection, but before you give them ALL away, here are a couple ideas of how you can teach your little ones two important math skills:

1. Measure those Teddy bears:  Two important standards to teach young children when it comes to measurement is to measure with “non-standard” units and to measure with “standard” units.  Some non-standard tools for measuring would be tape, cubes, your hands and feet, or yarn (as pictured below).  Standard measuring tools would include rulers, yard sticks, measuring tape, etc.

So, help your child measure his/her stuffed animals, and then compare which is longer, shorter, taller, etc.

2.  Sequence those stuffed animals:  This would be a perfect activity for following up measuring your child’s stuffed animals.  Simply ask your little one to put them in order from smallest to biggest, or shortest to tallest. 

 

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