With a baby in the house we go through a ton of baby food. This means lots of those little containers that are awesome for re-purposing for crafts, on the go snack containers, or even into educational toys. Gerber’s new Lil’ Bits convenient plastic tubs are perfect for your crawler and for crafting. We have had a blast playing with these counting boxes made from our Gerber Lil’ Bits containers.
Yesterday was a rough shopping day. It took three stores to find the one thing I was looking for…who would have thought that black-lights could be that hard to find this time of year? While out and about Meatball was on his best behavior. Poor little guy was just about falling over exhausted. Since he was so good I let him pick out one item. His choice? A gourd…
Now what was I suppose to do with that?!
Then I remembered seeing this adorable Geo Math Pumpkin over at Fun.A.Day and I knew what we were doing. This Geoboard Gourd activity was a BLAST!
Earlier this month we had made some teal pumpkins to support FARE’s allergy awareness campaign and the kids ended up using golf tees to poke holes into their pumpkins, which they loved. So I knew this was right up their alley!
This last week has been filled with tears as Livia has worked her way through her homework. And when asked how her day at school went the response was always somewhere along the lines of, “Oh, it went well but I hate math.” One of the ways that Livia stims is through humming and even at times Opera singing. So, the day she came home and admitted to getting in trouble during math class for “warming up her vocal cords” I knew it was time to find a way to make math fun and help some of the concepts she was struggling with concrete themselves in her mind. This Even and Odd Number Hop Game was a solution to our math problem.
With Livia she was able to identify even and odd numbers up to 10. The minute we got up to 11, 12, 13…she would begin to scramble and stim. The key to creating a memory is attention; being able to focus on the sensory input long enough to make a working memory (and eventually a semantic memory).
Farm Sensory Math Game: Your kids are bound to love this simple sensory math game that will have them digging for numbers while learning basic farming terms and concepts!
Recently we were sent two books (Casey & Friends A Year on the Farm and Big Tractors) and a friendly red tractor for review. Meatball is all about everything trucks, tractors, or trains right now so this was right up our alley!
After exploring the books (which we loved) we went browsing around Pinterest looking for some inspiration on how to tie the book A Year on the Farm into our daily activity.
What we found was this awesome Chocolate Play Dough Recipe from the Imagination Tree that with some modifications to fit our theme turned into hours of fun!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Color Sorting Activity: This is a quick and simple toddler activity that is a super fun way to celebrate the 45th Anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of those books that all of my kids have loved to tatters since the day they were introduced to Eric Carle’s world of color. There is just something about his books that invites readers to get lost between the pages.
Being that Meatball is just starting to pique interest in sorting and matching and that Eric Carle is well known for his vibrant illustrations, we decided that the best way to kick off our Caterpillar learning would be through a fun and colorful activity!