From Our House to Yours……Counting, shapes, colors and more!

Again with the numbers….honestly I can (and probably will) go on forever with some of these basic concepts. It’s what we have to do as parents. We introduce new information to our kids and then keep re-introducing, helping them make more and more connections. With that said….let’s get started!

Learning is all about building on what’s already there. You will notice that I use a lot of things over and over, like the number line and cards. This activity above has now become review for carter review. We go from the beginning, reading the numbers on the line. To ordering the numbers using the number line. The whole time we’re talking about each number and using our fingers to represent the number’s quantity. It helps to pull this knowledge out before building and extending a task.

Now to kick it up a notch! Hopefully you saw our last post about numbers. Here, Carter was counting out clips to match the digit on the card and clipping them to the card. If not here’s the link: http://campbellsclass101.com/2013/11/11/from-our-house-to-yours-how-many-is-five/. I just took this concept and recreated it. In the picture above you see Carter counting the orange triangles, then finding the corresponding digit. Same concept as with the clips, just in a different format.

You can see I incorporated two other concepts, shapes and colors. Also, I hope you have picked up on my underlying message….learning at home can be fun and easy. I made this activity while Carter was eating breakfast this morning. All I used was sentence strips, markers and scissors. The number line and number cards are simply reused everyday. I don’t know about you, but I do not have a lot of down time, so I have to create things that are quick and easy, but still fun for my bright, busy, two year old!

Zero is my favorite number to teach to little people. When they grasp the concept of zero you know they are really beginning to understand numbers. Carter saved this one for last. I think because he originally thought I forgot to draw something on that card. When I asked him which digit was left and what does it mean he sat for a second and then I saw the light bulb go off (I live for those moments!). He quickly grabbed the zero and exclaimed, “zero means nothing!” LOL, love that kid :-).