Easiest Ever DIY Geoboards

8 / 5 / 168 / 30 / 16

When we first moved back to Kuwait in 2013, the first month and a bit was certainly challenging… Miss G had just turned 3 years old, it was the end of August and the heat was unbearable, and I was stuck at home in our next to empty apartment with no mode of transportation and a busy little lady who had just been pulled away from her life as she knew it. Being our second time moving to the Middle East, we’d been smart and brought very little along with us, but it meant that until we had a vehicle and time to collect things to fill our home with, we just had to make do. If nothing else, the situation certainly forced me to get creative! Miss G and I spent our days building things with cardboard boxes, painting packing packing paper, creating with things like dry rice and pasta that we had in the kitchen, and filling our freezer with homemade popsicles. We made the best of it.

Make Ten {an easy card game for kids}

6 / 28 / 166 / 4 / 19

Miss G loves playing all sorts of card games, so when I came across Make Ten, a simple game that focuses math skills and uses just a generic deck of cards, I knew it would be a total hit.

UPDATE: Since sharing this game and our Make Ten printable play mat, I’ve had countless requests for play mats using larger numbers… Well, I’m so happy to say that I’ve finally gotten around to creating a couple of options and best of all – they’re customizable and can be used with any larger number you choose! Scroll to the very bottom of this post to find them.

Fill Your Cup {A Simple Addition Game}

9 / 29 / 1510 / 1 / 15

Numbers are currently HUGE in our house. Writing numbers, counting, skip counting, subtraction, dividing things into equal groups, addition… You name it, Grae loves it. {And of course I love that she loves it. ☺}

Ishful Math: Estimation Jars for Preschoolers

3 / 24 / 154 / 5 / 15

Estimation Jars for Preschoolers | Mama Papa Bubba

Oh, how I love Preschool Book Club weeks! Grae and I always have a great time reading our book and exploring it further through playful activities, and this week was no different.

Broken Hearts Number Matching Activity

2 / 11 / 153 / 5 / 15

While I usually tutor four afternoons / evenings a week, I took this week off and it’s been lovely. More than anything, it’s allowed Grae and I some quality time at home in the afternoons, which has been really nice. As a result, we’ve been doing all sorts of fun little spur of the moment activities and projects, which is exactly what this broken hearts number matching activity is.

Berry Bush Snack Subtraction

1 / 26 / 152 / 7 / 15

After seeing what a hit our recent play dough subtraction smash activity was, I immediately starting thinking of other fun, hands-on activities I could provide Miss G with to foster her love of exploring numbers {and subtraction in particular}. I’m fairly certain the play dough activity was so well-liked because of the smashing aspect, so I wanted something just as unique and fun. Simply taking manipulatives away from a pile was not going to cut it. {Well, not for me at least.} I racked my brain for interesting ways to take things away, until I thought of eating! G loves all sorts of healthy foods and is pretty much constantly hungry currently {hello, growth spurt!}, so snack subtraction of some sort was a perfect fit.

Play Dough Subtraction Smash

1 / 8 / 151 / 12 / 15

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.

10 Apples Up On Top Math Game

10 / 21 / 1410 / 29 / 14

$Ten Apples Up On Top Math Game | Mama Papa Bubba$

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.

{click to read more…}

Simple LEGO Addition Tray

10 / 14 / 1410 / 29 / 14

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.

{click to read more…}

Simple Apple Tree Addition Game

9 / 23 / 1410 / 8 / 14

Simple Apple Tree Addition Game | Mama Papa Bubba

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.

Snowman Counting and Number Recognition Game

1 / 26 / 142 / 3 / 14

Snowman Counting Number Recognition Game | Mama Papa Bubba

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.

SweeTART Sorting and Graphing

10 / 9 / 1310 / 10 / 13

This week, Miss G and I are participating in a candy play series with several other mamas and munchkins from around the world… On Monday we created beautiful glossy paint using Skittles, and yesterday we created candy clay that is fun, mouldable, and edible.

After yesterday’s homemade candy clay recipe, I decided that today we’d get back to finding creative ways to put Grae’s soon-to-be Halloween candy stash to good use. One of the treats that always seems to be popular during the month of October is small coloured candies, whether they’re SweeTARTS, M&Ms, Smarties, or something else. The good thing about these types of goodies is they lend themselves perfectly to all sorts of fun math activities – sorting, counting, comparing, and graphing included. So that’s what we did – we used a few individual-sized bags of SweeTARTS to develop some basic math skills, all in a way that just seemed like regular fun and games.