It's Playtime is Learning Time!

I love to find fun ways to teach new concepts to the boys.

Henry's been really into counting lately, so we've been doing a lot of things with numbers. [He's even adding and subtracting, and even sometimes dividing without even knowing it!]

Here's 4 learning activities for the kids from last week's It's Playtime!

Above, clockwise from top-left:

• Mama's Little Muse had fun mixing primary colors with Shamrock Color Viewer!
• Adventures at Home with Mom matched shapes! Match little shapes to their big shape and make a collage!
• A number game from Mummy Mummy Mum has had me thinking of how to make this perfect for Henry! Roll the ball through a tunnel and add [or subtract!] the number above the tunnel to your score!
• Compare, predict and test. Play Create Explore set up a WAY to learn about WEIGHT!

---

It's Playtime is a community for play loving bloggers to share ways to play.

Read more »

Sand Sensory Art: 100th Day of Preschool

Henry had his first homework assignment for preschool.
To create the number 100 out of something.
[Not 100 of something, but to make the numbers themselves.]

We discussed it together to decide what to make.
[Henry told me his teacher made one out of corn!]

We decided we wanted to make one with dirt.
Well, its February in Iowa and it just snowed about six inches, so dirt wasn't to be found.
We settled on sand. [Thankfully, our sandbox has a lid!]

Henry created the number 100 while playing with sand, inside!
It was fun and George even joined in.

First, I had Henry write the number 100 on a piece of scrapbook paper.
I was amazed at how easy this was for him.
His writing skills have really taken off, even if they aren't correctly done all the time, I'm still impressed. [He often starts at the bottom of letters and numbers, instead of the top.]

I then traced over it to thicken up the lines.

Henry painted the numbers with glue. 

And then the real fun began.

The sand came out.

Henry decided to dig in it with his backhoe.

Loading it up and hauling it to his paper.

This literally took him well over an hour to do.

He covered his numbers with sand, as well as pushing the sand around to make piles and spread it out. He was pretty busy.

When all the numbers were completely covered, he picked up the paper and shook it off.

Ta-da! 

The number 100 was still there where he painted his glue! 

What's your opinion?

Does he get an E for effort?

Like it? Share it!

---

Current sponsors :  Fudoo Boards  :  A Mom with a Lesson Plan  :  CraftProjectIdeas.com : My Toy Smart

Design your own party invitations at Vistaprint.com

---

Kid Activity: Crayon Color Sorting

The kids and I were out shopping, actually doing it to waste time to pick up Dad.

And I came across these crayon shaped paint sample cards. 

I had no plan for them, but I've been seeing a million ideas for sample cards lately, and thought there must be something I could do with them. It seems I'm starting to hoard things without a plan lately. Yesterday's activity was with colored tape that I had no plan for either!

I did come up with a learning activity for the paint sample cards.

Fittingly, we sorted crayons!

I taped the crayon shaped sample cards inside the holes of a muffin tin.

I set out our box of mixed up crayons and Henry sorted them!

We found out very soon that the color of the crayon, or the paper on the crayon is sometimes misleading.

A black crayon has a very light gray paper.

Sometimes a burnt orange crayon looks brown.

Henry learned to test his crayons before deciding what color it was. 

A sneaky way for me to have him practice scribbling, drawing, writing... as well as his pencil grip!

[tee hee hee]

Henry went through each and every crayon we had.

Placing it in the corresponding muffin tin.

Henry observed that there were a lot of orange crayons!

And blues!

[We counted them then to see which had more, turns out orange did!]

A fun color learning activity, and a piece of art in the process! 

Like it? Share it!

---

Current sponsors :  Fudoo Boards  :  A Mom with a Lesson Plan  :  CraftProjectIdeas.com : My Toy Smart

Design your own party invitations at Vistaprint.com

---

Fun Kid Activity: Lines of Colored Tape

I finally got some colored tape!

I didn't even have plans for it, but I felt the need to have it for some fun kid activities!

We got to it right away.

I taped some fun lines on the floor in three different colors.

A blue zig zag line.

A red curvy line.

And one straight line in green.

We ended up with two activities with this one setup with colored tape.

1. Walk the line of colored tape.
2. Blow pom poms along the coordinating color line.

Fun Kid Activity #1: Walk the Line
Read more »