A is for. . . Adding Up The Steps

A couple of fellow bloggers have decided to start a new round of Blogging Through the Alphabet. I have attempted this before, but I haven't been very successful. This time I have a different idea though. As I was going through old blog posts this past week, I noticed I have some neat ideas for activities and crafts that I did with the older girls when they were younger. Unfortunately, I always included them in my weekly wrap up posts, so they sort of got buried in my archives. I can't really share them as individual activities or create pinnable images to promote them and share my ideas, which is why I started this blog in the first place. So, I am going to make new posts for these ideas.

One of the benefits in doing this is, I am remembering these ideas that I had forgotten, which means I can now do these activities with the younger children. I will be sharing the old pictures and possibly sharing new pictures of the younger children participating.

Several years ago I came up with this neat beginning math activity for the older girls. I called it, "Adding Up the Steps."  

A is for. . .Adding Up The Steps

Here is how it worked:

I wrote one number 1-16 on half a sheet of paper and placed them on the stairs.

Then I made some cards depicting the number we were to add.  +1, +2 and +3 cards.  These were made on 1/4 of a sheet of construction paper.

The girls took turns picking one card.  

I put the equations on the easel.  They both started on 0 of course (the floor) and they had to climb the number of steps shown on the card they picked.  Then they told me what number step they were on.  I then said and finished the equation.

After they both took a turn, I erased the equations, replacing the first numbers with the steps they were now on.

We continued this way all the way up the steps.

They had to draw the exact number to reach 16 because other wise they would have had to climb higher which they obviously couldn't do.

Amelia scooted down the steps, counting backwards as she went.

The numbers remained on the steps for a while.  We played the game several times and when Amelia climbed the stairs she would count, which we did with all the children when they were little. However,  having the numbers on the steps helped her make the connection between the number and the numeral.  They definitely enjoy counting backward on the way down. We never did use them for subtraction, though I had wanted to. I will have to remember to do so with Hannah and Harold.

Penguin File Folder Learning Activities

We have been focused on penguins for a few weeks now and I wanted to finish up with some cute file folder games for the girls. There is one for Color Matching, one for Word Families and one for Math Facts as I wanted each girl to have something to help them at their level of development.

Here is how I made the basic folder:

I printed out pictures of penguins. As always I Googled "penguin coloring pages" and found one that I liked and then inserted it into my Word processing program to adjust the size. 

And I printed out some buckets/pails.

If you are wondering what the staples are all over the pages for, this is one of my time-saving strategies. I take several (up to 5) pages and staple them together so I can cut them together without the pages shifting.

Each file folder needs 6 penguins and 12 pails.

I cut the top off of 6 of the pails so I could tape them together to make a little pocket.

I taped the sides and bottoms together to do so.

Then I glued both the pails and the penguins into the file folder.

For the color matching folder I colored the front (cut) part of the pail before I taped it to the back.

Also, for the color matching game I wrote the colors on the penguins in the coordinating colors.

However, the other two folders are going to be slightly different. I attached Velcro to each of the penguins so I can change their bellies depending upon what word families or math facts we are working on.  I just cut additional bellies out of card stock.

I am going to have Amelia work on some /a/ word families to start with.

Tabitha will be starting with some simple numbers.

I found a simple fish pattern and cut them out in the 6 colors of the rainbow.

Hannah will match the fish to the correct color. 

Amelia will have to think of and write several words for each word family.

And Tabitha will have to find the sums and differences that make each number.

The older girls will write their answers right on the fish. If they want to write more I will give them more fish.

When we are ready to move on to other word families or math problems I will just cut out new white ovals for bellies.

A Walk Down Memory Lane: Paper Towel Roll Subtraction

A Walk Down Memory Lane

I was searching through my posts for a picture of one of the girls when I came across this forgotten activity. This was something that came to me in the middle of the night a couple of years ago.

I used an oblong basket, some Styrofoam balls and a paper towel roll, plus made some construction paper numbers.

Check out this subtraction activity I definitely need to add to our activity table this year. 

The girls are to use the paper towel roll to make the balls disappear, one by one.

moving the paper towel roll to the left as they go 

so the numeral corresponds to the number of balls.

When they are done, they have zero balls visible

Here is Tabitha trying it out. She really enjoyed this activity.

Amelia wasn't as fond of it.

Wooo, letting them all fall back in.

(Can you believe how much she has grown?)

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