That dollar or so I spent on a bag of fuzzy pom-poms might have been the most useful dollar ever. Both boys continue to be entertained by pushing them through the lid of an old peanut container, an activity I pull out whenever there is an emotional crisis mounting.
I've been collecting toilet paper rolls in hopes of doing this stick-counting activity, but I have yet to gather enough suitable twigs. So I created my own conglomeration of several activities I've seen: Levi used small tongs to put the pom-poms in the tubes, counting to match the number on the tube. He recognizes the number words one, two, three, and six, so I opted to leave the numbers off and let him figure out which tube "said" which number.
Like my lazy masking-tape construction? :)
I belatedly remembered that we've done a similar activity before to practice colors: I've got a set of toilet paper tubes with colored paper around them! Not surprisingly -- that was six months ago -- Levi is much better with the tongs now, and his ability to count one-to-one is also improving. (FYI, you can fit quite a few toilet paper tubes neatly into a shoebox. I'm getting very creative with my craft storage!)
Later (and I didn't get any pictures of this), we used the pom-poms to work on patterning by color. "Blue, pink, blue, pink . . . what comes next?" And so on, using up to three colors at a time. It was good practice, and Levi even created a pattern of his own.
Hooray for cheap educational activities!
That Levi never ceases to amaze. :-) Also, I like this activity. Off to pin it to Pinterest!
ReplyDeleteUpdate: Your idea is going crazy on pinterest. I pinned it late last night and it already has 44 repins!
ReplyDeleteNo way! I hope I gave enough credit to the people whose ideas I used, just by linking to their blogs. Thanks for spreading the love!
ReplyDelete