Monday, June 20, 2011
Today we are going to use some of Luke's little dino friends to show you a fun math activity to do with your preschooler. This activity practices addition, subtraction and comprehension.
The great thing about this activity is that you use whatever you have on hand. My boys are dino lovers and we have enough to supply the whole neighborhood (haha) so they work perfectly for this activity.
We are going to use this cow but it is going to be a mud hole. What you do is role play a math problem with your child. Tell your child that they are in charge of moving the dinos (or whatever you use) whenever you talk about moving them in the story.
And the story goes like this...Once upon a time, there was a really cool mud hole. Four dinosaurs decided to go play in the mud hole. (this is when your child counts and moves 4 dinos over)
The 4 dinosaurs had so much fun playing in the mud hole that 2 more dinosaurs decided they wanted to come play in the mud hole too. (your child moves 2 more dinos to the mud hole).
How many dinosaurs are in the mud hole? (You child counts the dinosaurs and tells you there are 6 dinos in the mud hole.)
At this point you have your child re-tell you the story. Basically you are practicing their comprehension skills by re-telling you the addition problem. You want them to be able to tell you that 4 dinos went in the mud hole, then 2 more came over, and now there are 6 dinos.
I always use one more dino than is needed to throw them off a bit and to make them really count and think about what they are doing. That's why I used 7 in the above example.
This also works fabulous for practicing subtraction. This yellow duck below is going to be our yellow brick road.
Just repeat the story: Once upon a time there was a yellow brick road. It looked like so much fun to walk on that 6 dinosaurs decided to get on the yellow brick road.
Three of the dinosaurs got scared and decided to walk off of the yellow brick road.
How many dinosaurs are on the yellow brick road? And then have your child re-tell the story.
My kids have so much fun with this activity. I even let them take a turn making up stories and I take a turn moving the dinosaurs. They try to stump me by moving dinos back and forth several times and I have to try to remember it all to re-tell it back to them. LOL! Fun times!
We have fun thinking of things to use. The back cover of this book is a pond...
This sheep is a cloud...The possibilities are endless.
You could use little cars and draw a simple black race track on a piece of paper. Really, just be creative with what you have.
I hope you enjoy this activity as much as we do!!
Monday, June 20, 2011 0
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Well, there was that time when Big Brothers got so sick and tired of Baby Sister messing with all of their toys that they decided to come up with their own solution....
Luckily she didn't try to climb out...
And at least they were kind enough to leave her with plenty of her own toys....
And then there was that time when Daddy said no more playing 'Angry Birds' so Andy and Luke took it upon themselves to get their Doodle Pros out and create their own Angry Birds game....(those are some ANGRY BIRDS, I'm scared hahaha!!)
And then there was the cute little visitors that took up space in our backyard...
It's been so fun watching Mommy bird feed her baby all day long every day. That takes some dedication hunting for worms all day! I am happy to report baby bird is now hopping around all over and will probably be taking flight in the next couple days. :)
And then there was that afternoon I spent browsing through old photos to find pics for my new wall photo collage and I came across this photo...
So happy this Man is the Father of my children! Happy Father's Day!!
Sunday, June 19, 2011 0
Friday, June 17, 2011
With July 4th fast approaching, I took some time yesterday to make some fun glitter fireworks with the kids. It is so simple and they turned out so cute!
Materials you will Need:
-Black sheet of construction paper
-glue
-glitter
Directions:
1. have your child use their glue to draw firework shapes on their black sheet of construction paper. I assisted my 4-year old on drawing one of them so he knew what I meant.
2. Sprinkle glitter on top of the glue. I had one of those glitter caddy's that I purchased at Wal-Mart that came with 6 different bright colors, so we tried a different color for each firework.
3. Turn the paper upside to remove the glitter and let it dry completely. This works really good if you add the glitter with the paper inside a cardboard box, but we just carefully turned our paper onto our plastic placemats and then I pushed all the glitter towards the middle and poured it into a sandwich bag to use on a future project.
They turned out so fun! With all the different colors of fireworks on the paper it looks like the Grand Finale. :)
Happy Crafting!!
Linking up to THESE Linky Parties all week.
Friday, June 17, 2011 0
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