Thursday, January 14, 2010

Preschool Math

J4 and I (and his brothers and sister) have been doing a lot of preschool math stuff over the last several weeks. In no particular order I'd like to share some of what he's been up to.

He loves to play with our learning cash register by Learning Resources. This is the deluxe model. the other day I caught him playing a game with it where the register asks for coins to be put in. I watched him place all the right coins in the slot. When the voice asked for a penny, he inserted a penny. So, then we played with money some more. He had a great time.

While sharing these skills with Dan, Dan decided to pull out real coins and let him have fun with those. My cell phone provided this picture of J4 sorting coins with Dan.
J4 has been working on counting from 11 to 20 and this week he hit the milestone! This is an excited J4 demonstrating a great session with his number train. Cool.

The other day he wanted to sew some buttons. We love buttons.

On to the second button...just like R9 he says!

Check out a few more activities from Preschool Activities in a Bag Volume 2. I have quite a selection of bags from both volumes 1 & 2 because I participated in two swaps. That's the way to go. You are just responsible for making a certain number of one activity, you mail them off, and then you wait for your mailbox to fill up with fun!
He's also been working on the Mathletics Kindergarten level when it's his turn to do school computer time. There is no preschool level so I have him working in kindergarten. Math-wise he's been doing well, but it requires reading so we all help him out with what the problem is here and there.

As we begin each school day, I like to have an activity out for J4 waiting for him. I also work on his Before Five in a Row stuff at the start of the day. We read the Before book and then talk about it some, then I send him off to do his activity. I try to have one building item (one morning this week it was Wedgits) and a bag activity ready to go for him.

If I don't fill his bucket of love first, there is sure to be mischief while I'm trying to work with the older kids. So, this works well for us. I'm working on establishing a rotation for these things so that it doesn't take long to figure out. I'd say my biggest challenge this school year has been being prepared for each day early in the morning. So, a set rotation would help me out a lot.

5 comments:

Ticia said...

I love all of your ideas.

Amy @ Hope Is the Word said...

Thanks for sharing, Heather. I, too have a four year old, and since her sister is only 5 and in K, I tend to just let her go along for the ride, sort of. However, some things are still too much for her, so I struggle with keeping her occupied. I'll have to check out those bag activities!

Love your blog--I check it every day!

Eleanor said...

What great ideas. I especially like the cash register. I would love to have one of those!

Kisha said...

That cash register looks really cool! I might have to add that to my Wishlist on Amazon. All 3 of my kids would get use out of it.

MG said...

Hi there! I realize this is pretty old so I hope you are able to answer. I'm trying to get my activities together for a preschool swap and wanted to try the "button sewing" activity. I'm only finding plastic canvas with small holes. It doesn't look like the holes are terribly big on the ones you have. Is it working fine for you? What are you using to "string/sew" the beads on? If you have time to answer I'd really appreciate it. Thanks so much!