Fun and Easy Competition Counting Game

Here is my favorite quick and easy game. It is the perfect number game to help children learn to count from 1 to 50 or from 1 to 10 or from 1 to 100 or whatever you are working on. You will see how adaptable it is.

All you need is:

A pencil
A piece of paper
Two dice

Have the players sit in a circle with the piece of paper and pencil in the middle. This can be on a table or even on the floor. Start to pass around the dice. Whenever someone rolls a double, they grab the piece of paper and start to write numbers on the paper from 1 to 50.

They continue writing as quickly as they can, until someone else rolls a double and steals the paper. That person continues writing numbers by picking up wherever the player before them left off. (For example: 35... New Player 36, 37, and so on.)

Whoever gets to write the number 50 before they lose their turn, wins that round! You can keep track of how many points each player has received on the back of the number page.

Continue until everyone gets bored, which surprisingly takes quite a long time!

The play can be adapted to any age child. Count up to 100 or just up to 10 or 20 to reinforce whatever numbers you are working on. You could even count by 2's, 3's, 5's or 10's for an added challenge.

I would suggest that you try this game the next time you are waiting for your meal at a restaurant, but I have to warn you..  play does get a little loud! There is something about the competitive element of trying to beat the dice that makes this math game loads of fun.

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Country Day: Africa

I am continuing our Country Day series, this time with Africa. I have included lots of fun books, movies, games, foods and crafts for learning about this amazing place.

See our Country Day post about Russia here and stay tuned as we feature more countries to learn about with your kids.

Books about Africa

And Two Great Books about Nelson Mandela

This one above was just published and is called simply "Mandela." 

African Foods

Melktert

Melkkos

Sweetcorn bread or Mealie

African Games

Go on a Number Safari by hiding numbers around the room or around the house. You can even make some binoculars out of toilet paper rolls to help you spy the numbers more effectively. For a fun variation, hide groups of stuffed animals (7 stuffed bears for example) and have your kids take pictures of each group of animals in order. 1- Giraffe, 2- Plastic Hippos 3- Rubber Snakes etc.

Mancala

5 Fun African Games This list includes such fun games as Stockings, Nyama- Nyama- Nyama, and Kudoda.

Great Movies with African Settings

The Lion King

Duma

The Gods Must Be Crazy

Invictus 

African Crafts

African Animal Crafts

Cave Drawings/ Sand Paper Art

African Masks

African Drum



African Folk Tales

African Folk Tale and Fables for Kids

Traditional African Dancing

Learn an african dance with this dance video!

Dress in Traditional African Clothes by draping brightly colored cloth around your body and your head turban style!

How to Wrap an African Style Kanga

Or check out this gorgeous African Paper Dolls Book.

African Paper Dolls

And don't forget to celebrate Kwanzaa!
Here are two great sites with lots of fun ideas.

Kwanzaa for Kids

Activity Village- Kwanzaa
The activity village site includes free printables!

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Toddler Activities: DIY Cheap & Easy Toddler Train

By Deborah Pace Rowley

                      

Toddlers love trains! In fact, you just might have a train fanatic in your house. I love all the cool Brio style trains and train tables out there. But if you are like me, I could never afford those expensive sets. 

That doesn't mean that you can't provide a train for your toddler to link, unlink, load and pull around the house. This fun DIY train is simple, cheap and easy to make. I started with 5 dollar store plastic soap holders with a top and a bottom. (They were travel set that you could use to take your soap on vacation.)  I added a set of baby links that I also purchased that the dollar store. The ten brightly colored links were also $1. So the total train set cost $6.00. It comes with ten cars once I separated the top and the bottom of each soap dish.  I was so proud of myself for drilling the holes in each side. I even found a drill bit big enough so that the links could fit through the holes. Girl Power! 

 

Toddlers will simply love loading the train with all their little animals and toys. You could add a pull string by tying some yarn or kite string to the end of the last link and your toddler could pull the train around the house. For older toddlers and preschoolers you could make this train educational as well. 

In the picture below, you can see that I added a colored square to the bottom of each car and Brooklyn tried to find an animal that matched each color. 

Here Brooklyn tried to put the correct number of raisins in each car. You could have your child load the cars with pretzel stick "logs" or gold fish or cereal or anything you have on hand.

Here I added an alphabet letter to the bottom of each car and Brooklyn is trying to find something to put in each car that starts with each letter. There are so many fun variations for playing with this toddler train. You could put one letter from your child's name in the bottom of each car and have your child rearrange the cars to spell his or her name correctly. You could put beginning sight words in each car and your child could link them up to make a sentence.

All aboard for lots of fun! Pin It

Toddler Activities: Puppy Love- A Valentine's Tail

By Deborah Pace Rowley

We have shared stories for Thanksgiving (The Turkey with the Terrible Temper) and Christmas (Santa's Pack). Here is a fun, original story for Valentine's Day.

It is called "Puppy Love- AValentine's Tail." What makes this story so fun is that you can help your child create a picture of little puppy out of hearts as you tell the story.

Muffin the puppy is in love with a kitten named Cupid. But like most cats Cupid plays too cool for her Romeo. Muffin doesn't give up, however, as he delivers his hearts, Cupid secretly uses them to create a portrait of the puppy to reveal her true feelings in return.

You can use your own red and pink construction paper to create the hearts that you need for the story. Or you can use our free printable of the pieces here. You can make this story reusable by laminating the pieces and attaching magnets so you can put the puppy together on a magnet board. Or you can simply print out the pieces, cut them apart and help your child glue them to a piece of white paper as you tell the story.

Either way you will have lots of fun. Older toddlers can start to pick out the hearts that are the correct color and size as you tell the story. Even preschoolers will need help putting the hearts in the right place so you can have the finished product in front of them for them to copy or you can show them where each piece should go to keep the final image a surprise.  As you tell the story over and over again, your child will quickly learn just where to put each piece to create the picture of the puppy. Then they can be responsible to tell the story to Dad or to Grandma or Grandpa.

You will find the text of the story below.

Puppy Love- A Valentine's Tail

Anniston with the real Muffin

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Toddler Activities: Santa Countdown Calendar

By Deborah Pace Rowley

It is so fun to share the Christmas season with toddlers who are just starting to understand the whole magical event. This can also challenging because they want to participate in all aspects of the holiday but many things are too fragile and too breakable for little hands. I have always tried to have a toddler-friendly advent calendar that was just for the youngest children in our family. This kept them excited and involved and kept me from worrying about our fancier advent tree with heirloom ornaments.

The easiest type of advent calendar for toddlers involves cotton balls that can be glued onto Santa's beard-- one for each day. This is an example of a calendar I used with Melissa and Shannon.

For their calendar I had placed a heart around every third or fourth day. For example--- there was a heart around the 4th, 7th, 11th, 14th, 18th and 21st. On the days that had a heart, we did something special such as going to see Santa at the mall or shopping for a present for Daddy. Sometimes I had wrapped a new Christmas coloring book or a new Christmas DVD that they could open on the day with the heart. Spacing out the celebration by adding hearts to the calendar helped make the long wait until Santa arrived a little bit easier.

I have included a printable Santa Countdown Calendar for you here.  All you need to do if you want to add mini celebrations is choose 6 dates spaced throughout the month and draw a heart around those dates on the calendar. Check your schedule and choose dates that are relatively free if you are planning an outing. Visit the dollar store and wrap up 6 small gifts if you prefer that option or choose a combination of the two.

Now all you need are cotton balls and a glue stick. Put up the calendar at toddler eye level and help your child stick on one cotton ball first thing each morning as her or she gets out of bed. This is a great time to practice numbers. You can also help your toddler count how many days are left before Christmas or the next heart. Hopefully this calendar will help the days fly by! Christmas will be here before they know it. (Isn't that right, Moms.....?!*&#)



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Preschool Activities: Letter of the Week {Cc}

By Tiffany Rudd

I realize this isn't a very holiday-ish topic to post on Halloween, but I found tons of fun candy corn activities to make up for it. Candy Corn are obviously a great "Cc" treat and since they'll be around through Thanksgiving you have plenty of time to try out these super fun activities!

 Snack Ideas:
      *Candy Corn Patterns: I love this idea from A Mommy's Adventures. All you need is a bag of Brach's Candy Corn Harvest Mix. First sort the candy by type and then work on candy patterns together.

Books:

      * Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina - This is one of my kids all time favorites to act out. One day I'll have a big box of funky hats to use with this book like my mom used to. 

      * The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle - This is a fantastic book that teaches days of the week, counting, and even the life cycle of a butterfly. We read this classic in preschool this week and created the egg carton caterpillars below.

 Crafts:
      * Egg Carton Caterpillars: This is one of those crafts where the process is more important than the result. These turned out looking kinda goofy, but the kids absolutely loved them! All I did was cut my big Costco egg carton into rows of 4. I punched holes in both sides of 3 sections and then let the kids paint them. After they dried we added google eyes, chenille straw legs and smiles. By the kids reactions, you would have thought this was a fancy/expensive art project. Brooklyn's still has a place of honor on her dresser.

       *Candy Corn Math: Another candy corn activity as promised! :) This is a great one for learning numbers and practicing counting. All you need is some construction paper and candy corn. You can find this activity here.

Free Printables:

      * When I was planning my curriculum for the letter Cc I was all prepared to create some fun candy corn number and letter puzzles. The three sections make them the perfect design for practicing both. Luckily I searched a little first and saved myself a bunch of time. Click on the pictures below for free printable candy corn puzzles for practicing numbers and letters. 

      * Click on the photos below to print the writing practice worksheet and the flashcard. I hope you have a fantastic Halloween and a fun week learning the Letter Cc!

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