Monster Week!!

Slime!

Math, science, sensory, fine motor, cause & effect, language development - all in one great Monster theme activity!

We combined 12 teaspoons borax with 2 1/4 cup warm water in one bowl and 2 1/2 cups glue with 3/4 cup warm water and green koolaid or food coloring in another bowl. We slowly pour the borax mixture into the glue mixture and excitedly watched the mixture form while one of the friends stirred!

the language used was so fun to hear!

"its lumpy now"

"oooh slippery"

"soft like gum"

"greasy"

"its slimy"

"Im gonna make a slime cake"

"its slippery and hard"

Monster week!!

Big Green Monster!

I put number stickers on the monsters on the table, the kids turned them to find the number and thats how many items they got to feed the Big Green Monster! We used all sorts of things to feed the monster - plastic insects, cars, little teddy bears, etc.

Ribbon, Yarn and Scissors!

At You're Invited Children's Center we put out baskets of spools of ribbon and yarn and few pairs of scissors then watched to see what happened!

The friends spent all morning unrolling, rolling, cutting, wrapping, measuring, hiding, dramatic playing, matching and more!!

Who has the longest ribbon?

"how long does the ribbon need to be for my ninja belt?

Lots of "ninja" fun!!

Great Shape Math Activity!

$ bin at Target has some great treasures! I found these great little square, cylinder and triange foam blocks and created these boards with cereal box cardboard and construction paper. The friends at You're Invited worked with these materials for the whole morning :)


There are so many skills these friends are working on!



Patterns, eye-hand coordination, sequencing, estimating, color matching, counting, seriation, cooperation...

Can you list more skills this super low cost but great activity provides?

Math Activities for Mixed-Age Groups!!

I found a pack of colorful small bowls at Ross Dress For Less for under $4, used decorater gems bought at a yard sale for $1 and printed number cards with dots. For older children I used dobbers to make the addition problems seen below and used small bowls I purchased at a yard sale too. This activity can be teacher assisted or the children can work by themselves. The great thing is that there is no wrong way to do this!!! If children count and sort like the 3 year old boy above is so excited about completing or if they match the dots and do one-to-one correspondence or if they just want to pick up the gems and put into bowls - its all good and so much learning is going on!!

During this morning we were also doing activities that encouraged learning about "Bears" - I didnt connect this activity with the theme until I saw a bag of Teddy Graham crackers in my office. I switched out the gems with the little bear shaped crackers and even the children that had already done this activity wanted to come back and do it again. I explained to the children that the crackers weren't for eating but I saved some and they would get them at story time. The bowls and number cards can be used over and over again with different counters depending on your theme.

Hope your children enjoy this activity that cost less that $5 and is rich with so much fun and learning!