After the success of last week’s play dough subtraction smash, I decided that we’d focus on another playful math activity this week, and since Miss G’s been all about getting going with Valentine’s Day stuff since we took down our Christmas tree, I thought we’d incorporate that too. While hearts were {of course} the first thing that popped into my mind, I wanted to switch things up a little, so an arrow addition matching game it was.
Since a home recycling service doesn’t exist here in Kuwait, I save all sorts of food packing items, hoping to find them some sort of second purpose before they end up in the bin. My hoarding usually serves me well and I’m almost always able to help out when fellow community members put out calls for recyclables to use in their classrooms, but sometimes my stash just gets out of control. Such is the current situation with my egg carton stash. It’s out of control, which means that there will most likely be many egg carton projects and activities in our near future, the first of which is a super simple egg carton letter sound sort.
This morning when we woke up to a miserable windy, dusty, trash-floating-through-the-air sort of day, Miss G and I opted to stay in and have a quiet day at home. We made a big pot of oatmeal, read stacks of books, played some games, built puzzles, and then played this super fun and simple play dough subtraction smash game I came up with a few days ago.
Not going to lie, this week’s preschool book club was a bit of a tough one… Tough because firstly, we couldn’t find the book anywhere. We visited bookshops, we visited grocery stores with book sections, we visited our school’s library, and we asked pretty much all of our friends. No book! Brad eventually scrounged up a digital version for us to see on the iPad, but after a friend suggested it this morning, I’m guessing that one of Kuwait’s many Instagram shops would have had it! I hadn’t thought of that. {Is this an around the world thing, or a Kuwait specific thing? Here you can order almost anything via Instagram and Whatsapp and have the items delivered to your door.} The second thing that made this week’s PBC challenging was that without the book physically in my hands, I had no inspiration. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a fun activity to go with it. It was frustrating. Eventually though, I thought of something {a very simple math game focused on addition and subtraction} and it’s pretty awesome. Not awesome because it was crazy cool or unique, but awesome because Gracen did not want to stop playing. In fact, we played from about 9:00 to 10:45 a.m. yesterday morning. One round after the next – non-stop! I love when something that was initially challenging turns out so well.
Early this morning Miss G asked me if we could play an adding game {the girl loves addition currently}. Not having anything prepared, I quickly scanned the room for something that could be turned into a math game without much fuss. Our ever-growing LEGO collection caught my attention first and I knew it had potential. I grabbed several bricks as well as a couple of just-purchased wooden dice {in coordinating colours, obviously ☺}. I figured we could use the dice to generate our addition questions and the LEGO bricks as counters, then added in the plastic serving tray just to give the game a defined playing area and surface.
Since returning back to the desert, Gracen and I have taken up journaling together, and I’ve got to say – it’s pretty much my favourite thing EVER. And the best part? I’m fairly certain that she loves it just as much as I do.
Throughout our days together, it’s not unusual for Gracen to come up to me and say something like, ‘Okay, Mama. There are 3 little ducks swimming in the pond at the park. 2 more ducks come to swim. How many ducks are there now?’ The girl comes prepared, too. More times than not, she has a pencil sketch on a huge piece of white paper in her arms to help illustrate the problem. She waits for my response eagerly, then pauses to calculate the total herself once she’s received my answer. I get a peppy ‘Yup! You are right!’ and then it’s my turn to create a story problem for her to solve. This goes on again and again.
While Gracen really enjoyed yesterday’s beginning sound sorting game, she played and finished it in less time than it took me to set it up. After the initial completion, we played several more times adapting it and adding new elements, but decided that we’d try some trickier sounds just for fun the following day.
Miss G and I had all sorts of fun this morning! After an early morning coffee shop date and creating our family portrait embroidery hoop, we put together a little beginning sounds sorting game that was both fun and simple.
Oh my goodness… Gracen has just been loving the book activities we’ve been doing with our Preschool Book Club! So much so that yesterday while she was happily engaged in an activity not based on a book, she stopped suddenly and announced, ‘I know what this activity needs! A book to go with it!!’ Then she ran to the shelf, sorted through to find a story that coordinated with the project, and brought it over, declaring, ‘Now that’s better!’ Hah!
Thanks to Jackie of Happy Hooligans, we’ve been exploring mirror play over the last few days and absolutely loving it. Mirrors make for an extremely unique playing surface, and adding in some iridescent glass gems takes it to a whole new level.
After seeing Jackie’s post about pairing mirrors with glass gems and dry erase markers on Happy Hooligans recently, I knew we had to try it. Mirror play is something I’ve wanted to explore with Miss G for a long while now, and seeing that post gave me the push I needed to go out and pick up a mirror dedicated solely to play.
Now that Miss G’s a little older, we’ve started doing a few learning activities here and there… My requirements are that the activities are fun, hands-on, and more like play than old-fashioned sit down sort of learning. This little number game was just that.
Even though Gracen has known how to spell her name for a long while now, we still enjoying doing fun name activities every now and then. I set up today’s activity while Miss G was resting, and kept it very simple. 3 trays, each with some play dough and some letter ‘manipulatives’ I collected from around the house. When Grae woke up, she spotted the play dough name practice trays waiting for her immediately and was eager to check them out.
This was a totally impromptu activity that started when Miss G was digging through one of our craft bins and discovered a brand new package of plasticine. Gracen really enjoyed it and it ended up incorporating several great skills – which makes it a win-win in my books. ☺