Math – Page 4 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Measuring with Duplos

I’m excited to share that our Tuesday Mini-Series for April is “Marvelous Math!” We do so many fun math activities that I just never have time to share them all on STEAM Thursdays… so this month every Tuesday will have a different fun math activity! I definitely have a little math lover growing up under my nose… so I’m learning to really encourage that by doing some fun activities with her! I hope you’ll enjoy this month of Tuesdays!

Quite a long time ago, I was super super active on Pinterest. Like an every day, multiple hours a day user. So I have a vast library of pins (over 4100) that make an awesome resource for me when I’m willing to take the time to sift through and find what I’m looking for. (That’s why sometimes I just tell you – I know the idea came from someone else, but I just can’t find the source.) Well, so anyway, a couple weeks ago, I sat down and sifted through my Lego Learning board, where I saw this idea from Anna at The Imagination Tree (I love her blog!). I stored it away in my brain, and shared it with a dear friend. So one day when I had very little inspiration to do anything with “school,” I texted Naomi and said “tell me what I should do!!! I’m lost!” And she gave me some ideas. Measuring with Duplos was one of them, and it was perfect for that moment.

So, I whipped up a little worksheet for us to record our findings on, gathered up some items for us to measure, and the activity began! Becca had so much fun with her Duplo ruler, that she kept wanting to measure more and more! So, I made another recording sheet – this time to take a longer ruler outside to measure things in our yard. She LOVED getting outside, and was soon trying to measure all kinds of things that weren’t on our recording sheet. So, I created another recording sheet for her using more household items found in our kitchen. And we went to town once again. I’m telling you, folks, this girl LOVES to measure! She’ll be ready for a real ruler very soon.

She was so funny about measuring the swing, though. I purposefully put something on there to measure the width… that I knew was longer than her Duplo ruler. I wanted to see what she would do. She got frustrated. And just told me to record “too many” as to how many Duplos wide the swing is… We have since talked about other things that are longer than her ruler and how to place her finger or another object to mark where the end of the ruler is, and move it to continue counting. That’s still a concept that is fairly challenging for her. We’ll continue to work on it!

The best part about all of this? I’m sharing my recording sheets with you! Obviously, feel free to record your own, and please share with us in the comments what your kids love to measure!

Click here to download the FREE PDF document with three recording sheets.
Please note – all of the photos used on these recording sheets were just copied over from Google images.

Did you like this activity? Please pin the photo to your own Pinterest boards, share this post on Facebook, etc! I do these things with Becca to enhance her learning, but I share them with you to hopefully inspire you and your kids to keep learning! If it does inspire you, please pass it on and inspire someone else! 🙂

Printable Pattern Blocks

Topic: MATH

This post today is super simple, and it started from a super simple need. I really wanted Becca to have pattern blocks. But I’m also really trying to cut my online spending… so I decided, why buy her pattern blocks when I could make some and laminate them MUCH cheaper… and then they could be whatever colors I wanted and whatever size I wanted… and in whatever quantity I wanted!!

(Be sure to pin this! Thanks!)

SO – HERE’S YOUR LINK FOR THE PRINTABLE

Just select what colors of card stock you want to use, print, laminate, cut, and PLAY!

Don’t want to go to the effort of making your own, and prefer to buy them online?
Here’s a fabulous set from an affiliate link for you. 🙂

Fraction Feathers With the Fuzz

This week’s topic: MATH

Becca is totally in love with Gertrude McFuzz. She has the app on her Kindle Fire HD Kids (find out more about it from my post here and here.) and listens to it/watches it FREQUENTLY. So much so that she pretty much has the entire story memorized, and can take Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (aff link) and almost read Gertrude line for line. (And honestly, it’s a fabulous moral/life lesson to be engraining in her brain – if you haven’t read it, you really must!)

Another one of her recent fascinations has been fractions. I recently said something like “let me cut that in half for you,” and she said, “what’s half?” And then we had a conversation about something else that was divided into equal pieces… and then she asked about my measuring cups… and then she finally said, “You keep telling me things are fractions. Can we do them?” Hahaha. Seriously. This girl. She LOVES math! So, working from my background knowledge of introducing fractions, and combining that with the way I know her brain works, I came up with this super fun activity that she just absolutely LOVED!

$fraction feathers$

(Get your FREE PRINTABLE HERE!)
Please note – the photos the front cover of my printable are just google search images.
The photo of Gertrude used for the feather pages was snapped by my camera from the book.
Can be printed in color or b/w.

So here’s how it works – print the sheets on card stock – so the glue won’t mess up your paper. Then, get some feathers (Becca knew we were doing Gertrude when we bought the feathers, so she selected the blue/green/yellow pack because Gertrude’s feathers are those colors in the story – you could use any colors). A great way to introduce the concept of fractions is to talk about what the top number and bottom number mean. You don’t have to call them numerator and denominator, but you can if you want to. For Becca, I started with the bottom number. The bottom number is the total number of feathers we need to glue on. Then, the top number tells us how many special feathers we need to pick of the same color.

She didn’t want to mix the colors up, but you could obviously easily have 2/5 be one color, and the other three be other colors, etc. We glued them on to Gertrude, and let the pages dry. Then, we went back and talked about the fractions, and she told me what color feathers matched with the fraction. I wrote the color word on the line for her. Then, we made them into a book just by punching holes and tying ribbon through the holes. You could easily laminate them and put them in a ring binder, but she loves to feel the feathers. I know that it won’t last forever, but it was a super fun project, and every time we read her book, it’s fabulous fraction practice all over again!

Like this activity? Please share it with others! You can also share my Facebook page with others – I share activities like these regularly – not only from my own blog, but also from other bloggers. And, each day at noon, I share a new must-have book to add to your personal library! Coming up this next month, March is all about “real” books – you won’t want to miss these fabulous non-fiction finds for ALL ages of kids!

Math Clips Addition Matching Game

Our STEAM Subject today is MATH!

There are SO MANY times that I get frustrated. It’s really hard to be the mother of a gifted child who is VERY asynchronous in her development. I see all these adorable activities on Pinterest that are age appropriate for her, but they are color matching. Or they are shape sorting. And while those activities might be fun and totally appropriate for 98% of her peers, they aren’t appropriate for Becca. She doesn’t like to do things that are too easy. The girl wants to be challenged. A lot. And that’s fabulous. But, it does create quite a frustration on my part. She is super into math. She wants to add and subtract food from her plate (which we do frequently). She wants to add and subtract shoes from the shelf (which we also do frequently). But addition and subtraction activities without manipulatives usually equal a worksheet, which she HATES doing. And I don’t blame her. Worksheets remind her that she can’t write yet. And then she gets frustrated.

So, I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with some ideas for games that are similar to those color matching / shape sorting type activities, that cover the skills she’s ready for. Enter my

$math clips$

I had a bunch of little ocean stickers, so mine are ocean themed. You could do conversation hearts for Valentines day, or stars, or dinosaurs – whatever you have of the little tiny incentive chart stickers. Note: your child may not need the stickers to count. Becca doesn’t use them some of the time. But they make it more age appropriate and fun! Plus, it’s always good to have that visual reminder of what 8 starfish look like, what 7 turtles look like, etc. I also put a sticker on the end of the clothespin so that the answers for each card can easily be matched to the correct card if they are all stuck in a large Ziploc bag together. I did +2 and +3 with answers 5 and above. But if you have more stickers and use a larger sheet (I just cut one piece of card stock in half lengthwise), you could easily do larger numbers. Or, you could do much smaller numbers if your child isn’t quite ready for the big answers, and/or is still needing to sit and count each sticker to get to the total. I love how easily this activity can be modified to fit the needs of the child. And honestly, wouldn’t this be a fabulously fun activity for 1st graders learning addition as well?

Note: clothespins can be very challenging for a child who struggles in the fine motor department. Becca has had lots of practice and still has trouble – especially since these are on the right side of the paper and she is left-handed. If your child is struggling with the clips, it helps if you hold the card for them so that all they have to worry about is putting the clip on. They may also need you to hold their hand to help them squeeze if their pincer grip isn’t very strong.

Colored Sensory Tubs

Now that I do all kinds of interactive sensory bins for Becca, I had to really dig deep to remember how I started with her. There’s a picture of 8 month old her floating around Pinterest playing with her very first sensory bin… and sadly, the link is broken because my old blog doesn’t exist anymore. But, it’s a super cute picture, and hopefully the picture alone has given lots of moms ideas. It brought me back to my “roots” of how to start for him.

It’s as simple as sorting your Baby Bees’ toys by color. If you’re like us and have an older child, you probably have a MILLION baby toys that your Baby Bee has “adopted” from their older sibling(s). And then there are the Christmas presents that just never seem to stop, that equip your Baby Bee with even more toys they probably don’t need. So, take all those excess of toys and turn them into a learning experience!!!

Don’t have an older child and an over abundance of toys? Just wait! HA! No, seriously, what I did for Becca was to sort her toys, and then I added additional things that were ok to go in her mouth – like long strips of colored ribbons and fabric tied together into a large knot. Think dog chew toy. Seriously, ya’ll, it works for Baby Bees, too.

So, you’ve got all these toys to sort. What to put them in? Well, you probably know that I’m a huge fan of Dollar Tree. Get some of their little colored buckets to help you organize. Then the great thing is, the toys are organized, too… plus they are sensory bins! Double bonus!!

Right now, Grayson’s color sensory tubs are for blue, yellow, and red.

The rest of his toys are also organized in Dollar Tree bins – I especially love the big basket I found for all of his cloth books, which are never organized and needed something larger to just throw them in so they stay off the floor!

As an extension for play for an older sibling, have him or her help you sort the toys. Let your Big Butterfly help you sort them by color, deciding which color is most prominent on that toy. Your Big Butterfly can also select which color your Baby Bee will play with – and encourage Big Butterfly to talk to Baby Bee about the color, and point to that color if the toy has multiple colors on it. If your Big Butterfly is anything like mine, they’ll love the challenge. Becca is all about teaching Grayson things. She’s quick to say, “Look, Brother, this is yellow. And this is yellow. But Pooh’s sweater is red. And so is his hat.” It’s also a great extension to the activity to have Big Butterfly help clean up – remembering to sort the items into the correct bucket.

After they’ve been sorted by color for a while, get creative – sort into soft and hard, or noisy and quiet… so many ideas for using those toys!!

And again, if you don’t have a million toys, first, praise God! (Seriously, ya’ll, I think we have toys coming out of our ears!!) Second, look for things around your house that would be safe that you could add to the toys you do have. Do you have colored washrags? Do you have colored plastic bowls or plates that perhaps your Baby Bee isn’t ready to eat off of just yet? Look for items at Dollar Tree that could be considered “toys” now, and could grow with your child – like colored plastic cups that for now can be a toy and later they can drink out of. Or those little plastic measuring cups that right now they can just chew on, but later they can use in a sensory bin and then later use to learn about measuring. If you feel your Baby Bee is lacking in soft stuffed animals, Dollar Tree also has a million of those… or we could donate a few to your cause. 😉 Remember, however, that with your Baby Bee, less is more. You don’t need a box of 30 red items. 5 is plenty. Ideally, they’ll have different textures, weights, etc, but even if you have five identical items, it’s all good. The focus is to introduce colors.

As your Baby Bee gets a tad older, you can begin providing two tubs to play with, and see if your Baby Bee gravitates toward one color or the other, and see if Baby Bee can put the items back in the bucket. (At 7-9 months Baby Bee should be really awesome at pulling everything out of the bucket, and may begin to start setting things back inside closer to the beginning of the 10th month. Don’t expect color sorting til Baby Bee is much older – for some Baby Bees, color sorting between two colors won’t happen until well after Baby Bee’s first birthday. Remember always – every Baby Bee is unique and different!)

Colored sensory tubs are a great way to keep your Baby Bee happy during tummy time, and encourage Baby Bee to keep reaching for toys, trying to crawl, and practicing rolling!