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Learning Fun with Easter Eggs

April 7th 2012 11:18
Easter is a fun holiday for little ones. Not only is the weather typically warming up around this time of year; people hide colorful plastic eggs full of candy! The annual egg hunt can lead to a variety of interesting learning games. If you do not want to wait, simply gather your collection of plastic eggs and get started today!

Reinforce skills with plastic eggs for preschoolers

Group, sort, and organize the eggs. Teach children how to group using a variety of Easter eggs. Over the years, my plastic egg collection has become quite diverse. We have the traditional colorful plastic eggs in red, yellow, blue and purple as well as the pastel versions, the large, the small and a handful of novelty eggs that are designed to look like sports balls.


Let your child dump the bag and sort into piles. They can sort by color, size or other criteria they determine. Instead of piles some children naturally place eggs in lines. My son was always lining things up, cars, stuffed animals and the eggs.

Color recognition- Hide eggs and have them look for only a certain color. You can put little notes inside to make the impromptu hunt more fun. Red eggs can have a note that says "Red" for example to help your child associate the word with the color.

Number recognition- Put a letter or number inside each egg, and then have the child line up all the number from 1-10 or check off each letter as they find it on a chart.

Reinforce skills with Easter eggs as your child grows





Teach an older child how to make a map with Easter eggs. Let them hide eggs and create a map to each location, or hand them a map that you prepared to lead them to the hidden eggs.

Practice skip counting with eggs or introduce concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Ask questions such as, "How many eggs does everyone get?" "If there are ten eggs hidden and you found seven, how many eggs are left?"

Word pattern reinforcement can be accomplished through playing with Easter eggs. Write a word pattern such as "at" and put it inside an egg. When a child finds that word pattern, they are instructed to write down all the different words that follow that pattern such as; bat, cat, sat, fat and so on.

Review for a test by putting a question in each egg. When a child chooses an egg, they have to open it and answer the question posed. Alternately, place the answers inside the egg and have the child come up with the question. This works especially well with memorizing state capitols.

Easter eggs are an inexpensive way to infuse fun into learning. Be sure to add a little surprise treat from time to time to keep the games more exciting.
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A is for Always

April 2nd 2011 12:52
For 26 days in April (minus Sundays) I will be posting a blog for each letter of the alphabet.
"Sylvie's word of the day"
I am all for challenges, so when this was dangled in front of me in my writers group, I grabbed it.

Hundreds of people signed up, literally 1037 people. Go ahead, Sign up here, if you dare.

This mini adventure is fairly mundane, but with 1000 bloggers jumping in, stalking each other, chatting away everyday, something good is bound to happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Always is my word of the day, in honor of ALWAYS learning. Life is too ....oh wait, I'll just quote Henry Miller, he said it best.....


"develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music, the world is simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself." ~Henry Miller

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Set game company

July 14th 2010 02:58
SET

Love this game....
As per their website, SET is a highly addictive game of visual perception. I love the random, openendness to this card game. It's fun to play with a wide range of ages to really see different perspectives.

Players have to locate three cards that have each of the four features is either all the same on each card or all different.

Set


http://www.setgame.com/
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Math Fun

July 6th 2010 11:12
B]Ideas to Introduce Math at an Early Age

Many of these activities need little to no preparation. Learning happens all day for a young child. Make the most of the in-between times, errands and daily chores. Incorporating math concepts is easy, but remember to keep the conversations light hearted and matter of fact. Forcing math is a good way to turn them off to learning.

Knowing Numbers

* Count everyday things while you go about your day. Learning that numbers are symbols that stand for something concrete is a huge leap in knowledge. Counting becomes more than words to song.
* Let them play with number magnets. Teach them the names while they are holding them up. Eventually ask them to show you a certain number.
* Writing numbers at a young age is more art than math, but it’s good for their fine motor skills.
* Squeeze in counting during their playtime; ask how many crayons they have or how many blocks are in their tower. With enough counting experience, children learn that five blocks are five blocks no matter how they are stacked.
* Play a game, like asking them to hop 4 times, or see if they can take 10 baby steps. This is fun and passes the time while waiting for an appointment.

Matching

* Equal and not equal are important concepts in math. Have children help match socks, or coins.
* Play dominos, there are lots of preschool versions out that might be more fun than the traditional set.
* Have them copy your facial expression
* Make a block tower and have them copy it
* Play an easy game of concentration, use shapes and fewer cards to start

Classifying and Sorting

* While matching concentrates on what is alike, sorting focuses on what is different. Have them sort their dolls according to size, or put their cars in groups according to color or type of vehicle.
* Try sorting by their rules. Give them a pile of shells or buttons to sort and see what they come up with.
* Play sorting games in the bathtub. See which toys float and which ones sink.

These skills are so basic to adults that it is easy to forget that we ever learned them. Developing these fundamental skills through play will help children progress much faster in both math and literacy.

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Early math education is often neglected. There are many, many initiatives in place to foster reading skills from preschool, starting as young as one in the case of the "teach your baby to read" program and encouragement from everyone to read to your child.

To be honest, I am firmly planted in the reading crowd. As a homeschooling mom, the sooner a child can read on their own, the better! I also think that part of the problem in the lack of early math education is that many of the people who go into the early education field are not fond of math themselves.

That being said, the benefits of early math education are far reaching and cannot be ignored.

Indicator of Future Success

In a study by the Society of Research in Child Development reports that a child’s knowledge of number concepts when they enter school is a good indicator of future success. This information should encourage all parents and educators to introduce math at early ages.

Naturally Curious[

Children are naturally curious. They are interested in just about everything, using this trait can allow for wide strides to be made in mastering number concepts at a very young age.

Build Confidence

Understanding numbers, shapes, colors, patterns and counting at a young age builds confidence. Knowing how to manage the items in their world creates a sense of ownership with their surroundings, as does learning the lingo. Being able to decipher the language of math and relate it to themselves is an important building block.

Capable

Children are capable of learning deeper math concepts than usually assumed. Given the opportunity to learn math skills at a young age builds necessary connections in their spatial awareness. Everything in math is both concrete and abstract, learning these concepts takes time to develop and mature. Early exposure allows the mind to process the skills needed to proceed.

Easily Incorporated

Luckily introducing math at a young age isn’t difficult. Chatting about putting one sock on each foot or asking them to hand each person at the table one napkin easily introduces the concept of one to one correspondence. Learning to count is one thing, learning how numbers relate to concrete items is another stage in their development.

Helps in Language Development

Activities to develop math skills, also promotes language and literacy skills. Increasing the vocabulary needed to process math helps children discuss their world. These skills are highly necessary when they start to read. Knowing numbers, shapes, “more than” and “less than” gives them a new way of telling and understanding stories.

Progressive

Math builds on a set of knowledge, each concept relating to skills the children already have. Progressively learning at an early age, can side step failures due to gaps in knowledge. Those gaps are what makes many children give up on math in later years.

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