Math Archives - Page 16 of 19

Math is Fun {The Sunday Showcase}

May 24, 2014 By Deirdre

Math is fun! When I was learning how to be a teacher, my professors repeated over and over again hands on learning was key to children building a strong foundation in all concepts I was going to teach them. Learning through hands or Montessori style activities really help children see that math is fun. This week I am sharing three exceptional posts that featuring hands on math learning activities from other blogs and one I linked up to The Sunday Showcase. ( I hope you don’t mind that I am featuring one of my own.)

$Math is Fun$

Living Montessori Now has put together a post of wonderful math printables with a transportation theme. These would be great to do this summer to keep math concepts driving through your children’s brain.

Fantastic Fun and Learning’s Ladybug Math Game post shares several wonderful ways to explore math with plastic bugs. Fun manipulatives are a great way to get children excited about math.

Stimulating Learning’s Rainbow Math Center is wonderful! It is filled with a variety of learning elements that children will love. I love that they included a mirror in this center.

Playing Math Games on your back fence or chalkboard is a great way to review math concepts. This is the math activity I shared in the link up last week.

Link Up Information

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If you’re linking up we encourage you to visit other links!

Please note that by linking up you are giving us permission to use a photo (with proper link to you!) in our featured section and on our Pinterest board!

An InLinkz Link-up

Cool Math for Kids Plastic Egg Patterning

April 25, 2014 By Deirdre

Plastic eggs are a wonderful way to introduce or review patterning with children. We always end up with a ton of plastic eggs this time of year. I am always looking for fun ways to use them. Here is a cool math activity we did using them.

An AB pattern like yellow, green, yellow, green is a good place to start with young children. They can place stacks of the egg halves in AB next to each other. Another way of patterning them is to place them in an egg carton in the AB pattern. Either the whole plastic egg or half of one can be used. An egg carton will give children space to display two rows of patterns.

While using an egg carton will keep the eggs from rolling around when they are used whole, we found using half an egg stacked up like a skyscraper or on their sides nested worked best for my kindergartner.

After working on the AB pattern, we explored the ABBA, ABC, AABB, ABBCA patterns. I had placed these pattern combinations on index cards for JDaniel to work with. He has done a lot of work with patterns during calendar time so; he understood what I was asking him to do in this cool math activity.

After creating the pattern I had placed on index card, I had him make up some of his own. My job was to guess that the pattern was and repeat it. I think one way that children display understanding is to have to explain or teach others. He was a wonderful teacher.

For more cool math activities please check out my Early Learning Math board on Pinterest.

How do you reuse plastic Easter eggs?

Amazing Earth Day Activities For Kids

April 20, 2014 By Deirdre

Here is a collection of amazing Earth Day activities for kids that I have created for this blog and for several others. These crafts, science tools, and activities feature items that have been recycled and reused. Wait! There are a few Earth Day themed snacks and one or two activities that are not recycled. They were too much fun to leave out of this collection.

Newspaper Bowler Hat

Backyard Science Table

Wrapping Paper Collage

Blueberries and Grape Earth

Greater Than and Less Than Egg Carton Gator

Paper Bag Turkey (Using newspaper, bread tags, and paper bags)

Former Wipe Container Become a Sensory Bin

Blueberries and Grape Earth

Seven Ways to Use the Bottles in My Recycling Bin

Plastic Jug Jellyfish

Lorax Made of Magazine Pictures

Recycled Treasures Christmas Tree

Milk Jug Skeleton

Water Bottle Fish Mobile

Egg Carton Color Matching Activity

Wipes Container Emotions Pumpkin Game

Hanger Balance

Old Rope Letter Walking

Soda Bottle Flower

Plastic Lettuce Box Terrarium
Homemade Animal Tunnels
Egg Toss Bottles

Egg Carton Catapult

Coffee Filter Earth Craft

Elephant CD Puppet

Challenge

If you have a recycling bin at your house, I want to challenge you to sift through it with your children. I bet that you will find that you come up with lots of fun ideas as you look through the items it contains. There will be things that would be great building materials, crafting items, math manipulatives, etc…

If you take this challenge, please come back and tell me what you have decided to use one of the items for. Feel free to stop by my Facebook page. There will be a series of Facebook Earth Day idea posts there where you can share them.

For more Earth Day activities to do with children please stop by my Earth Day board on Pinterest.

Fun Activities with Chicks and Eggs

April 17, 2014 By Deirdre

This is the time of year for fun activities that feature chicks and eggs. Easter is part of the reason, but it is also the season that many birds give birth during. (We can hear the baby birds chirping outside our front windows.) A number of big and little chicks along with their eggs have been featured in posts on this blog.

Let me share twenty of them with you!

Cool Math for Kids- Easter Egg Learning– Children decorate a construction paper egg with primary shapes. They are then asked to record how many of each shape they used to decorate their egg.

Easter Chick- Read.Explore.Learn.– Shares several fun activities with chick and eggs. One activity includes a bingo dapper and a polka dotted chicken. Read.Explore.Learn.- Counting Chicks and Ducks- This post focuses on several math activities with a poultry themed. Working with one on one correspondence is one of them.

12 Ways to Learn Using Plastic Eggs– A dozen different learning activities using plastic eggs are shared in this post.

Dolch Sight Words- Unscrambling Egg Letters– Dolch sight words are hidden in plastic eggs. Children are asked to unscramble the letters to form Dolch sight words.

Green Eggs and Ham- Read.Explore.Learn- This post shares several green eggs and ham themed activities. A tic tac toe game with bacon strip crosses and green egg circles make this game really fun.

Fun Craft for Kids- Torn Paper Chick– Torn paper gives this spring chicks a feathery effect that is fun and super cute.

{Rabbit’s Food} Read.Explore.Learn– Shares a fine motor activity featuring math, carrot shaped eggs, and numeral writing.

Cool Science Experiments- Making Spider Web Eggs- Shares how to make hard boiled eggs that when peeled are going to have a spider web design on them. These have serious awe factor.

Cool Science Experiments- Making a Rubber Egg– Directions on how to create a bouncy egg are shared in this post.

Science Experiments for Kids- Spinning Eggs- This post includes are downloadable recording sheet. Children explore whether a hard boiled or raw egg will spin.

Science Experiment for Kids- Floating or Sinking Eggs- Shares via a science experiment sheet how to make an egg float in a glass or water. The experiment sheet also includes a section to record the experiments results.

Kids Science- Egg Carton Catapult– Half of an egg carton becomes a catapult with just two other materials we all have a home. There aren’t any fun activities with chicks or eggs in it ,but sure is fun to fling objects from a catapult that used to contain eggs.

Science Experiments for Kids- Frying Eggs on the Driveway– During a heatwave we decided to see if we could fry an egg on the driveway. It worked. JDaniel is still talking about this experiment.

{Science for Children} Falling Chickens– This post shares the book Loopy Coop Chickens Letting Go and a science experiment we conducted with cupcake liner chicken.

Easter Game- Egg Toss Bottles- Two recycled juice bottles are transformed into plastic egg catchers. This looks like an easy game to play, but catching the egg in the catcher is trickier than it looks.

Plastic Egg Snake– Old plastic eggs become a fun threading activity in this fun post.

Deviled Egg Recipe for Kids– Walks you through how to turn hard boiled Easter egg into a delicious snack that your children will love.

Easter Bunny Salad with Leftover Eggs– Leftover hard boiled eggs and toasted bunny croutons make the salad in this bento lunch fun and delicious!

Deviled Egg Recipe for Kids– Walks you through how to turn hard boiled Easter egg into a delicious snack that your children will l

{Kid’s Lunch} Apple Chicken Salad- Shares a delicious chicken salad with an apple crunch.

These fun activities with chicks and eggs covers a wide array of learning skills and fun foods. I hope that you will find at least one or two egg and chick theme activities here that you would like to try.

Easter Coloring Pages with Math and Reading Skills

April 14, 2014 By Deirdre

Easter coloring pages can be more than just filling in various objects with color. They can as you will see in this post be Easter coloring pages with learning skills. Combining both coloring and learning engages children and sneaks in concept learning and review.

I created two Easter coloring pages that review a skill that my son and I have been working on. The first focuses on adding numbers up to twelve. The second focuses on letters that children commonly reverse when reading and writing.

Let’s look at how we used each Easter coloring page to learn and color.

Easter Coloring Page- Roll and Color Math Chick

The first coloring page we looked at is called Roll and Color Math Chick. JDaniel and I sat down with two die and a bag of crayons. He was asked to roll the two die and count up the dots on the each dice to find the sum. (As I mentioned in post called Cat in the Hat Math Activity Mats, we use dice with dots. If you have a more advance learner, you may want to use dice with numbers on them.)

Every time JDaniel rolled a sum he colored in the dot containing that number. If he rolled a number that was already colored in, he was able to color in the circle labeled Free. Once that circle was colored in, he had to roll again to try to find a sum that that was empty on the Easter coloring page.

Easter Coloring Pages with Math and Reading Skills.

Easter Coloring Page- Roll and Color Letter Chick

The second Easter coloring page has uppercase letters on it. I had toyed with using lowercase letters in the circles, but I had trouble finding a font that had a lowercase “q” that children would recognize.

The way the game worked was that I had put letters on colored dot shaped stickers. The stickers with the letters were put on wooden cubes. JDaniel was asked to rolled one of the letter dice at a time. He read me that letter and then showed me its match. If he got it correct, he got to color the matching circle on the page. If he got it wrong, he had to roll the die again.

Here is the Roll and Color Letter Chick printable.

Both games ended up being a great way to review learning concepts. When JDaniel had finished each Easter coloring page, he was invited to color in the rest of the chick and add some other elements to the picture.

We sat down and did these activities together as parent and child. I think these roll and color Easter coloring pages could be done with pair of children as well.

If you are looking for math and reading activities for younger learners, you may want to visit my Early Learning-Math board or my Learning to Read board on Pinterest.

Cool Math for Kids- Easter Egg Learning

April 4, 2014 By Deirdre

Simply adding shapes to a paper egg can open the door for exploring several math concepts. That is why this post is called Cool Math for Kids- Easter Egg Learning. We actually covered several math skills in this crafty math activity.

It all started with a cutting a simple egg shape from construction paper. I selected a bold blue color of paper for this cool math for kids activity, but a piece of white paper would have been just as good. I cut the shapes for this activity ahead of time. In hindsight I could have had JDaniel cut out the shapes himself.

I asked JDaniel to create rows of patterned shapes on the egg. If you want your children to have a more opened ended activity, you could have them glue the shapes anywhere they wanted to on the egg. Layering of the shapes is fine too. If you choose to do this activity that way, you may need to remind them to keep some of each shape showing. You will want to be able to see each of the shapes in the creation to count them later. If they can’t see the shapes, this won’t end of being cool math for kids. It would be a cute Easter egg craft.

When all of the shapes had been arranged and rearranged, we glued into place. If you want to reuse the shapes to do this activity again and again, you may not want to glue the shapes down. You can actually move to the next math activity without the shapes glued down.

With the shapes in place have your child or children record on a piece of paper or a shape chart the number of squares, circles, triangles and ovals that were used to decorate the egg. If the shapes have been layered over each other, you may want to help them remember which shapes are layered underneath the shapes they can see. An oval and a circle may look very similar. A square and a rectangle may look similar too.

We glued our egg and shape counting chart to a large piece of construction paper to hang up. You could do that too. You could also glue the egg and the number chart into a math journal. You could also just hang up the egg.

We spent time talking about shapes on the egg after we had glued it down.

I asked these cool math for kids questions:

Which shape did you use the most?

Which shape did you use the least?

How many circles and ovals were used?

How many shapes were used on the egg?

Starting to use math vocabulary words into our conversation as well as a number of math skills help build a strong math foundation.

If you are looking for some other Easter themed activities, you may want to check out my Easter board on Pinterest.

Butterflies in Crafts and Activities

March 24, 2014 By Deirdre

We haven’t seen any butterflies since the temperature here started to yo-yo back and forth so, we made a cupcake liner sun catcher butterfly to remind us that spring is here. We can’t see the butterfly flitting around the yard, but we can see it superimposed over the view of our yard as we look out the window. Maybe when the temperature warms up we will be able see our sun catcher butterfly and a real live butterfly at the same time. I hope it warms up enough for that soon.

I cut out the outline of two butterflies and shapes on their wings. JDaniel could probably have traced my outline and done some cutouts himself, but I was inspired to do this after he had gone to bed one night.

The trickiest part was having the paper stay folded as I cut out the each shape. I didn’t want to end up with lots of crease lines in the paper. Had JDaniel been awake he would have told me that wouldn’t matter or we could have taken turns holding the paper for each other.

I found a super fun set of cupcake liners when I went to JoAnn’s to get the materials for the Easter Egg Toss Bottles project. I knew that they would be thin enough to let light shine through them and colorful enough to make pretty sun catcher. They were also super easy to cut.

The tricky part about using the cupcake liners was that it was hard to cut them to fit the cutouts perfectly. The smaller cutouts were easy. It was the long cutouts at the top of the butterfly’s wings that offered a challenge. At first we tried to cut the outside edge of the cupcake liner to see if it would be long enough. It wasn’t long enough. The arch in the liner kept it from working. The only way to make it work was to layer to sections of cutout cupcake liners. We really weren’t sure how that would look, but it end up being okay.

A wonderful attribute of cupcake liners is that they have a smooth flat section and a fluted section. The areas we used the fluted section on ended up having a really wonderful texture to them. The texture wasn’t too noticeable, but was just enough to add a little bit of a funky flair to the craft.

Cupcake liners have been a wonderful crafting tool at our house. We have made a cupcake liner bouquet and pumpkin craft with them so far. I am thinking a decorated Easter egg may be in our future.

Here some other crafts and activities featuring butterflies we have done:

Science Experiment- Making Butterfly Wings Flap
Butterfly Number Count
Butterfly Bento

How have you used cupcake liners outside of making cupcakes or muffins with them?

{Worksheet for Kindergarten} Saint Patrick’s Day Math Activity

March 12, 2014 By Deirdre

Leprechaun Roll and Draw is a worksheet designed for children in K4, kindergarten and first grade. It could be used to work with any child. You can change the numbers above the facial features if you like to represent numbers your children need to work on. None of the facial expressions that children are asked to draw to match the number that they have rolled are really that difficult. I guess I should have said here is a fun Saint Patrick’s Day worksheet or printable that can be used for working on math and fine motor skills. That probably would have been a more accurate description.

Materials Needed:

You could have them use crayons, pencils, magic markers or color pencils. Traditional pencils and colored pencils allow children to revise their eyes, noses, mouth or ears if they feel like they want too. Crayons and magic markers allow children to add more a wider variety of lines and textures. What you decide to have children use is up to you.

We tend to use dice with dots on them right now at my house. Being able to count the dots has been very helpful when trying to add the numbers rolled on both dice. If you are trying to encourage your children to work more abstractly with numbers, you may want to use numbered dice. Using one of each type of die would help children that are having trouble making that jump. They can put the numeral die’s number in their head and count on the number on the dotted die.

How to play:

We played this game on our own, but it could be played in a small group or pair. If you choose to have more than one person working on it, you may want them to alternate what facial feature they will get to draw. You could also have everyone start with a sheet and rotate the sheet to the next person for the next facial feature. This worksheet for kindergarten would would well in a center too.

If you have a child, that really dislikes drawing, you could have them roll the die and describe what you need to draw for them. That would add a vocabulary element to this activity.

Here are the links to the Leprechaun Roll and Color printables:

Leprechaun Roll and Draw-Blank

Leprechaun Roll and Draw

If you are looking for more Saint Patrick’s Day themed activities, crafts, or food creations, you may want to visit my Saint Patrick’s Day board on Pinterest.

Dr Seuss Shape Activity

February 18, 2014 By Deirdre

While looking through a book that contains a collection of Dr. Seuss stories, I got the idea for this Dr.Seuss Shape Activity. I am not sure why. Dr. Seuss’ illustrations are filled with fluid curves and fun bending lines. When I looked at Thing One and Thing Two, I saw ovals, circles, squares, and rectangles.

Skills This Activity Explores

I decided that this activity needed to involve a lot more learning skills than just cutting these shapes. (Though cutting skills could have been enough.) Involving tracing, cutting, letter writing, and visualizing in the activity seemed more exciting.

Finding the Craft Supplies in the Recycling Bin

That led me to get a pizza box out of the recycling bin and cutting out the shapes we would use to build the Dr. Seuss’ Thing One and Thing Two. The cardboard the pizza box was made of was super easy to cut out and thick enough to make tracing easy. Although we had cereal boxes in the bin too, I decided that their cardboard would be too thin to trace around.

Making the Shapes

I went with small tracing shapes for this project. Small shapes would fit onto a half sheet of construction paper when assembled into Thing One and Thing Two. They worked out well for this project. JDaniel did a good job tracing them. I would have made bigger tracing shapes for a slightly younger child.

Creating my Thing Two Dr. Seuss shape activity was done first. Primarily to make sure that it would look okay when it was assembled. JDaniel used it as a model somewhat when he created his Thing One creation. Having one already created ended up being helpful.

Then I put out all the supplies on the table for him and asked him to join me in creating. Having everything ready to go helped the creation process go very smoothly.

Dr. Seuss Math Activity - Tracing Shapes

JDaniel Creates the Dr. Seuss Shape Activity

Tracing carefully was easy for JDaniel. He placed the shapes all over the paper which gave him a lot of wiggle room for cutting. I had wedged all my shapes into one side of the red, white, and blue paper when I had cut my shapes out to save paper. When I saw what he was doing, I was glad we hadn’t done our tracing together. He might have tried to follow my lead and his way was better for him.

Assembling the Dr. Seuss Shape Activity Featuring Thing Two

Watching JDaniel put the shapes together to make his version of Dr. Seuss Thing Two was so much fun. He arranged the shapes on the paper to create his creature on paper just as I had done. (Only he wasn’t in the room when I made mine.)

JDaniel decided to write out Thing One on the smaller of the two white circles before gluing it down. I did mine the opposite way and was stuck with that circle. If I hadn’t glued it down early, I would have cut out another white circle and written Thing Two on my Dr. Seuss creation again.

Assembling the Dr. Seuss Shape Activity Featuring Thing One and Thing Two

Thing One turned out great. I love how JDaniel completed this Dr. Seuss shape activity. His creature has eyes that make me think he is up to something and he has a very warm smile.

What materials did we use to create our Dr. Seuss shape activity?

blue, white, and red construction paper
glue sticks
scissors
cardboard shape to trace
black markers

Are you looking for some other Dr. Seuss activities? Here are some others we have done:

Green Eggs and a Cat in the Hat Shaped Lunch

Lorax Collage

Lorax Lunch

Green Eggs and Ham Tic Tac Toe Game

Fox in Sox Sock Puppet

If I Ran The Zoo Field Trip

Suprise! I have created a Dr. Seuss Themed Shape Activity printable set of shapes you can use to make these super cute Dr. Seuss creatures. You can cut out the shapes for your children or have them cut them out themselves.

You can assemble these shapes to make shape craft below.

Mardi Gras Masks and Learning Activities

February 7, 2014 By Deirdre

Mardi Gras is a festival filled with many symbols like a decorated mask and colorful beads. Both a mask and a necklace of beads can be fun learning tools as well as Mardi Gras party elements. We recently used them to do three different learning activities at my house.

Mardi Gras Activities

Mardi Gras Mask

There are two different activities that we did with Mardi Gras masks. Both were fun and used a variety of learning skills. The first was to decorate cardboard masks with odds and ends from our craft closet. The second was to create a bar graph based on the colors we used to decorate the masks.

Cardboard Mardi Gras Mask

Let’s start with the foam mask. I pre-cut the cardboard masks from an old pizza box and put them out with a variety of materials to decorate with.

I dug out the following items:

Glitter glue
Stickers
Sticky backed jewels
Wiggly eyes
Beads
Buttons

I wish that I had found feathers, but we just haven’t used them to craft with in the past.

We both had fun decorating the masks. Our creative juices really flowed. It is easy to decorate them when you know that there really isn’t a wrong way to do it. Mardi Gras masks are all unique and different.

Mardi Gras Bar Graph Activity

I created a printable that displays a Mardi Grade Color and Graph Page at the top and a bar graph at the bottom. Children including JDaniel will be asked to decorate the circles on the mask using the colors red, blue, yellow, and green. They will also be asked to use each color at least three times. I really want to make sure that children don’t just use one color to fill in fall the circles. I also want to make sure that they have a couple of circles of each color to record on the graph.

When children have finished coloring the circles, they will be asked to count how many circles of each color they have. They will color the bars in the bar graph to match the color of that set of circles. I have uploaded a copy of the Mardi Gras Color and Graph Page printable for you to use with your children.

Mardi Gras Beads Venn Diagram

Two strands of Mardi Gras beads can be formed into a really cool Venn diagram. You can make the circles tall and narrow or short and wide. It will depend on the size of the object you have going to have your children sort.

We sorted button in our Mardi Gras bead Venn diagram. Before we started sorting, we decided what attributes we were going to focus on. Those attributes were written down on index cards and placed above each of the circles on the Venn.

The attributes we chose were blue and large. The buttons that were both blue and large went into the middle of the Venn where the circles overlapped. The blue buttons went on the right side of the Venn and the large buttons that weren’t blue went on the left.

I really love how portable this Venn diagram is. I think we may be taking the Mardi Gras beads out with us to sort on hikes or playground outings. It would be great to sort objects we have found along the way.