muffin tins Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Learning Colors Activities and Printable

September 12, 2016 By Deirdre

I had so much fun creating muffin math activities! I thought you might like a set of activities that focuses on skills for younger learners too. Today I have a color word learning activity for you that uses muffin cups. You could place them in an actual muffin tin if you like.

Learning Colors Activities Supplies

Some links below are affiliate links.

Color Word Printable for Muffin Tins for Kids
Muffin Cupcake Liner Baking Cup
Mega Blocks

Learning Colors Activities

The goal of each of these activities is to help children recognize colors and match them. The manipulative I chose is one that would be easy for young children to pick up. If you want to do the activities with older children, you might chose smaller objects like LEGO, pom-poms or buttons.

Finding the Color

The first activity you will want your children to do is finding blocks that match each color. You can point to each colors circle in the flower cup one at a time. Then have your child or children see if they can point or pick up that colored block.

Tip: If you are just starting to explore colors, you may just want to have out one color cup out at a time. Your children can then sort through the blocks to find that one color.

Building Color Towers

Once your children have grasp of each of the colors, you can have them dig through a pile of blocks to find a particular color. When they have found all the blocks of a particular color, you can have them stack the blocks together to make a tower.

Building Flower Stems

Instead of building towers that could topple over, you could have your children build flower stems. They can create a column of colored blocks under each of the flower cups. If you have enough blocks, you could have your children at leaves to each of the stems.
As I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to use Mega Bloks. You can have your children build towers or stems with LEGO, buttons or pom-poms. The pom-poms can’t be stacked, but the other objects can.

More Early Learning Activities to Come

This is part of an early learning activities series inspired by I Can Teach My Child called Toddler Time. Although my son is no longer a toddler, I will be joining I Can Teach My Child to share activities you can do with your young children this month. I will include ways to using activities with older children in most of my posts.

They are activities I did with JDaniel that I never shared with you. Some will be new activities I wish we had done. I hope you will love them and want to try them out with your kids.

Here are the muffin tin math activities I shared last week:

Skip Counting Oak Leaf Numbers

Apple Basket Muffin Tin Numbers and Activities

Muffin Tin Skip Counting Sheets with a Leaf Theme

September 9, 2016 By Deirdre

Earlier this week I shared with you Apple Basket Muffin Tin Numbers. That printable set was designed to focus on one to one correspondence and number recognition. Today’s skip counting sheets build on those concepts and introduce two more basic math concepts. Skipping counting and patterns in my mind are two skills that walk hand in hand. Kids have to figure out just how many numbers they will count by looking for the patterns.

Skip Counting Sheets Visual Clues

I designed these skip counting sheets to give children a number of visual clues. You can choose to share the clues with your children or have them discover them by themselves.

What are the visual clues?

The odd numbers all have the numbers on the left side of the leaf.

Yes, that means your children can find the even numbers on the left.

Your children will notice that the odd numbers have orange leaves.

They will also notice that the even numbers have yellow leaves.

Your children will see that every other column is made of the same type of leaf.

Finally, they will see that every other number in a row is the same.

Skip Counting Sheets and Supplies

Some of the links below are affiliate links.

You will need to download a copy of the Muffin Tin Skip Counting Sheets with a Leaf Theme for Kids . They were designed to fit into a muffin tin, but you can use them on a flat surface if you like. I liked the idea of keeping the counting objects contained.

You may be asking yourself why after drawing oak leaves I didn’t use acorns in this counting activity. While I have done acorn math activities in the past, I decided to avoid the whole are acorns safe discussion this time. If you want to use acorns with these skip counting sheets, please use them. There are a number of counting objects you can use for this activity. I went with small pom-poms.

We used homemade pinching chopsticks for the apple basket counting activity. You could use them for this activity or have your children make pincers with their thumbs and pointer finger.

Below you will find a list of other number and skip counting sheets and their themes.

Apple Muffin Tin Counting Numbers

Apple Basket Counting Numbers

Pumpkin Muffin Tin Counting Numbers

Free Counting Worksheets – Apple Basket Muffin Tin Numbers

September 7, 2016 By Deirdre

Fall makes me think of apples. My family has gone to a local orchard to gather apples almost every fall. When I sat down to create some fall themed math activities. I knew one or two of them was going to have to have an apple theme. The apple basket themed numbers found on these free counting worksheets will be fun to explore. Each numbered circle tucks into a section of a muffin tin.

Free Counting Worksheets Activity

Some of the links below are affiliate links.

Supplies

Free Counting Worksheets – Apple Basket Muffin Tin Numbers for Kids
Muffin Pan
Red Pom-Poms
Chopsticks
Rubber Band

Putting the Activity Together

You will start by cutting out the number circles. I tried to cut out perfect circles. If you look carefully, you may see some little specks of white. The circles were designed to fit in the muffin cups. If you get close to cutting out perfect circles, your circles should fit in the cups too.

Next you will need to put together your pom-pom moving tool. You will place a pom-pom between the two chopsticks. Then you will wrap a rubberband around that end of the chopsticks. The pom-pom will make opening and closing the chopsticks a little easier for kids. The rubber band will keep the two chopsticks together.

We used pom-poms as our counting items. I thought it would be easy to move with the chopsticks. If you have apple Erasers or red buttons, you could use them instead.

Counting Activities

These free counting worksheets can be used in a center, a small group, or one on one. Your children can start by moving the correct number of pom-poms into each muffin cup. They might find it tricky at first, but I don’t think it will take it long to figure it out.

When they have filled each of the muffin cups, you can have them move them out of the cups one number at a time. You can select the numbers one by one for your children or they can do select the numbers themselves. This activity will allow them continuing to work on one to one correspondence. They will just be doing it in reverse.

I would have your children the say the number they are working on out loud. It will help them store the counting information in their visual and auditory memory.

More Free Counting Worksheets

In the next few days, I will be putting up three more sets of free counting worksheets. Below you will find a list of the worksheets and their themes.

Apple Muffin Tin Counting Numbers

Patterned Oak Leaf Muffin Tin Counting Numbers

Pumpkin Muffin Tin Counting Numbers

How to Make Interactive Math Games Focused on Counting

June 11, 2015 By Deirdre

$How to Make Interactive Math Games Focused on Counting$

You don’t have to go out and buy special learning elements to make interactive math games, You can totally use things you have at home. If you don’t have these elements and have to buy some of them, I know you will used them over and over again. ( We used this same set of buttons to play Ladybug Roll and Cover , patterning and so much more over and over again.)

$How to Make Interactive Math Games Focused on Counting$

How to Make Interactive Math Games

You really just need three key components for your math games. Two of the elements are totally needed and one can be changed or not even used.

The first thing your are going to need is a container to hold and display what children will be working on while playing the game. I used baking cups. They are cheap, easy to label, and flexible.

Here are some other things you could use instead:

plastic bowls
margarine containers
egg cartons or egg carton cups
small jewel boxes
lids
ice cube trays.
place mat with labeled areas
print out of a math work space

The second thing you need are objects to count. We have use buttons a lot, but we have also used the following:

Here are some other great math objects

lids
bread tags
straws
plastic animals
linking cubes
plastic discs

The final element you will need to something to contain, hold or keep all the elements together. I love using muffin tins to hold and display interactive math games. We happen to have a lot them. ( I used to make my son muffin tin lunches a lot when we was little. ) In this case we used the muffin tin as part of the game. It helped the baking cups from flopping around! Its shaped helped give the game a themed and a little whimsy.

We could have put the muffin cups with number written on them on the table and just put the buttons in them. I have found that have a solid container to put small objects in has been easier for my son. That is another reason we used a muffin tin.

$How to Make Interactive math games focused on Counting$

The last thing I think you need to think about is what kind of counting you want your kids to do. Do you want them to count in number order, identify each number and place that number in it or skip count? Each of these is a unique counting skill.

You can use the same interactive game set up to work on all of the skills share above. The directions you give your children to complete each task is what will change.

$How to Make Interactive math games focused on Counting$

If you try creating your own interactive math games, please leave me a comment below telling me about how them or share a picture of your game on my Facebook page.