This is a fun way of practicing some math. I don’t know any kid who doesn’t love gems. You can use this kind of loose parts to make math more attractive.
While counting, possible to strengthen hand muscles. Simple setups are great helpers for parents. Yes, it is very easy setup and includes many skills in it like color sorting, counting, hand-eye coordination, fine motor control and more.
Here is super simple play idea to develop little ones’ math skills. There are 15 leaves on the branch. The autumn has just arrived and the leaves have turned yellow. 1 leaf fell down, remained 14 leaves. 1 more leaf fell and remained 13. We put all the fallen leaves into the box. At the same time, the fallen leaves are increasing 1,2,3,4,5… Here is our idea, you can develop it as you want.
Stamping is always too much for the kids. So you can turn this fun into counting activity.
There are many ways of preparing DIY puzzles. You can use cardboards, popsicle sticks, papers, fabrics etc. I had prepared these puzzle 3 years ago (in 2017) for MB when he was almost 3 yo. Now OT is playing with them. You can guess how happy and emotional I am๐ It is good that using popsicle sticks makes it very durable.
Q-tips are great for tracing activities. If you haven’t tried to use them yet, you can give a start with easy lines and numbers.
We pressed the cookie cutters on foam to get shapes. Foam is great material to prepare very quick setups. We used pipe cleaners and colorful foams for this shape and color sorting activity. If you want to turn it into numbers activity you can write number on foams. It is very good hand exercise at the same time. It includes in many motor skills.
This time we prepared very practical one. I realized that my son was always writing numbers from the bottom up, that’s why I prepared this activity and he wanted to try it again and again. If you want to reuse it many times, you can cover the paper with clear packing tape.
