Counting & Color Clock

I've recently gotten several packages that came with cardboard circles and decided to come up with creative ways to reuse them. The first was this Clock craft, that will help teach numbers, colors and time.

What You Need: A Cardboard Circle, plain white paper (2-3 sheets or enough to cover circle), construction paper, glue, scissor, two pipe cleaners

What to Do: Cover the cardboard circle with the white paper - one way to do this is to apply the glue directly to the circle then lay the white paper on the circle before cutting. This way you can line up edges and get full coverage. Cut out the numbers 1-12 from the construction paper or feel free to draw them directly on the white paper once it's completely dry.  Glue the numbers in place. Use the pipe cleaners - or scissor if cardboard is thick - to poke a hole in the center of the clock. Fold pipe cleaners to desired length and thread them through the hole trying them together in the back to keep them from sliding out of place.

Math Monsters

These great homemade goblins are great for Halloween and also reinforce math skills. Use them to help teach shapes, colors, patterns, or even multiplication (3 sets of 2 arms equals 6 arms)

What You Need:  Construction Paper, glue, scissors, crayons and decorations if you have them: googly eyes, pompoms, feathers, yarn etc.

What to Do:  Cut out different shapes of various sizes and put them together to create a "monster". There really is no wrong way to do this, since it's a "monster".  Your child's monster can have three eyes, six legs, a mop of curly yarn hair. Let them be as creative as they want.

For older kids, use brass fasteners to hold the pieces together so that the monster can move. Younger kids can just glue their monsters together.

Tessellations

Tessellation is just a fancy math word for tiling or a repeating pattern. Simple tessellations are all around us: bathroom tile, a brick wall, a honey cone. Simple tessellations are easy and fun to find and make!

But you can have your little one exercise their math muscles by creating their own complex tessellation.

For A Simple Tessellation:

What You Need: a piece of paper, a small simple shape (Triangle, Rectangle, Square or Hexagon) crayons or markers.

What To Do: Trace the simple shape over and over again until it covers the piece of paper. The let kids color to create patterns.

For A Complex Tessellation:

What You Need: A piece of paper, a second piece of paper cut into a small square, a scissor, a pencil, tape, crayons or markers.

What to Do: Have your child draw along one edge of the small square. Carefully cut along line and tape the cut out to the opposite end of the square. (i.e. draw and cut out a triangle along the bottom edge, then tape the triangle to the top so that you have what looks like a house with a large triangle door.) The objective is to be able to fit the square like a puzzle piece into itself over and over again. You can repeat this with the other straight edges of the square.

Then help your child trace the new shape over and over until you've tiled the entire piece of paper. Once the paper is tiled completely, then let your child color in the tiles any way they choose. With patterns or randomly.

Suggestions:

-Estimate then count how many shapes it will take to cover the piece of paper.

-Guess then test how many different colors you would have to use to color the entire tessellation without letting tiles of the same color touch.

Fruit Chart

Get your child counting with this easy survey and chart!

What You Need: small poster board or piece of construction paper, ruler, crayons/markers, friends & family

What to Do: Use the ruler to help draw columns & rows on the poster board. Remember to make sure the first column is wider than the rest. Starting with the second column, fill in the first row with pictures, or names of different fruits (Ex. Banana, Apple, Orange, Plum, Watermelon, Grapes).

In the next row, write your name (Mom) in the first column and then fill in the chart. For each fruit write either a smiley face or a frowning face to show whether you like the fruit or not. Explain, 'I don't like bananas, so we put a frown in this box. But I do like watermelon, so here we put a smile!' After your row is done, fill in a row for you child.

Next ask friends and family, write in their names then have your child ask 'Do you like..." help them fill in the correct face in the boxes. Once the chart is full or you run out of people to ask, review the chart with your child. Make observations; 'Mommy's the only one that doesn't like bananas.','Yaya likes all the fruits and Papa only likes bananas." "You and Daddy both don't like oranges."

Count how many people like each fruit, how many fruits each person likes, etc. Ask questions like, Which fruit do most people like? Which fruit do fewest people like? How many people like more that 2 fruits?