Alphabet, numbers and colors game – with free printable

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Ness

We’ve been having fun playing all sorts of letter, number, and color matching games this week. I printed out the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 1 through 10 and a few different colored squares and we played some treasure hunt and matching games. They’ve kept R happily occupied for days so I thought I’d create a downloadable version of our game to share with you. Simply click on the photo below and you’ll be taken to a pdf file which you can then download. Below I’ve listed the different games we’ve been playing. Have fun! I’d love to hear about what games you come up with in the comments below. Let’s share some fun ideas.

If for some reason the photo does not link to the downloadable pdf, then simple click here for the free printable alphabet, numbers and colors game.

HOW TO PLAY
I began by cutting the letters, numbers and colors into individual squares. I then divided the squares into three separate bowls – one bowl contained the letters, a second contained the numbers and a third contained the colors.

We began with a simple alphabet hunt. R pulled one letter out of the bowl and would have to find an item that began with that letter. I think my favorite is the astronaut lego man that he found for “A”.

Next we tried a combined letters and numbers game by selecting one number square and one letter square. So in the photo above, R needed to find two items that began with an E, one item that began with a Z, and three items that began with a B.

We tried different combinations of printed squares for our treasure hunts. This time we looked for a pink item that began with a B and blue item that began with a T. This was probably the most challenging of all the variations that we played. It was easy to find an item that began with the correct letter, but not so easy to find one in the correct color!

For this game, we searched for two blue items.

Here we selected a printed square from each of the three bowls. In this example, we had to find one item that was blue and began with a T.

These games have been lots of fun since we can mix and match what needs to be found. I’d love to hear about the games that you create with them.

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on our Facebook page or follow us on Pinterest. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

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Water Painting on a Chalkboard – a Pre-Writing Activity

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Ness

Here’s a fun pre-writing exercise that I set up for R (3). It was quick and simple to put together and R absolutely loved it. I was inspired by this post at Teach Preschool. It looked like fun and I decided to add some number and letter recognition to the activity since R is all about letters and numbers at the moment!

YOU WILL NEED:

A chalkboard – this is actually optional. If you don’t have an easel or chalkbard, you could simply draw with the chalk on a path or your drive-way.
Chalk
A paintbrush
A container of water

I began by using the chalk to write some letters and numbers on the board. I showed R how to dip the paintbrush into the water and then paint over the letters and numbers with the water. Here he is painting over the “R” that I wrote.

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Easy DIY fine motor skills activity

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Ness

This Montessori style fine motor skills activity is so quick and simple to put together. Does your family eat cereal? Does your family eat macaroni? Yes? Then you have everything you need to make this activity and you won’t have to outlay a cent!

(That odd marking on R’s hand is the remnants of one of those temporary tattoos. I think this one was once a frog on a skateboard!)

To make this, I simply took an empty cereal box and pierced some holes in a random pattern over one side of the box. I used a pair of scissors but you could use anything you have on hand such as a skewer. I tried to vary the width of the holes a little. The idea is for the child to push the macaroni through the holes so I made some holes quite large, thus making it very easy to slide the macaroni through, and for other holes I kept the fit nice and snug to create a bit more of a challenge. After you have pierced the holes in the box, pour some uncooked macaroni into a bowl and voila! Instant game.

R was 2.5 when we did this. He really enjoyed it and his attention was held for at least fifteen minutes – no mean feat for him when he was that age! I just love the look of concentration on his face in this picture. He’s also doing this with his non-dominant hand in this picture which I was very interested to observe, especially given the fact that this was the first time we’d tried anything like this.

This was such a simple activity to whip up in no time. Just the thing to occupy a little one when you need a quick few minutes to get something done. This activity encourages fine motor skills including the all-important pincer grip, hand / eye co-ordination, concentration skills, and patience. All that from a cereal box! Who knew?

After 15 minutes of deep concentration, R was done, and he decided the uncooked macaroni could be put to much better use as an afternoon snack!

Finally it was all over. Literally. All over the table, that is!

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on our Facebook page. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

February activity trays – V is for Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Ness

These are the trays that I’ve put together for R (3.5) this month. This is something I do every few weeks. The trays usually have a Montessori influence and I try to include an activity to cover fine motor skills, art, sensory play, practical life, literacy and numeracy. R LOVES these “games” as he calls them and this month was his most excited reaction so far. I usually set them out at night after he’s gone to bed so he wakes up to shelves filled with new trays. To say he was thrilled when he saw these Valentine’s Day themed activities would be a a slight understatement. “Oh WOW! Wow! Thank you Mummy! Thank you!” I never push R to pick up these trays and work with them. They are just left on our shelves, all set up and ready to go and he chooses when and how often he will do them. I’ll often peek into the living room when things have gone a bit quiet, just to check that all is ok and there he’ll be, sitting at his table, quietly working, or should that be playing, with one of his trays. Even though each of these activities does have an intended lesson to be learned, I always leave their use as quite open ended. I will demonstrate each tray to R, but then I will leave it up to him whether he chooses to use the trays in the way I’ve shown him, or whether he would prefer to create a new way to use them. I love seeing him use his imagination to come up with new ways to play with these trays. So, here they are…

This is our Valentine’s themed sensory tub. Sensory tubs are by far R’s favourite type of play. The very firt time I created one for him, he played with it for two and a quarter hours straight. That was something to behold given that he was only 2.5 at the time. For our Valentine’s sensory tub, I was inspired by this tub from the completely wonderful Counting Coconuts. I gathered up anything and everything that was red, orange or pink and just threw it in there. I created an eye spy game by taking pictures of some of the objects. R then looks for the items and places them on the photographs as he finds each object.

R really enjoys this game and is very particular about placing the found objects on the photo in exactly the same position as the photographed object, right down to the dice needing to be placed with the same numbers showing upwards as in the photo. Hmmm. Detail oriented or simply inherited his mother’s OCD tendancies?

Here are the rest of our trays. Several of these trays were inspired by these trays, again from Counting Coconuts. Honestly, I can’t rave enough about the fabulous ideas that Mari-Ann comes up with. Mari-Ann is the reason I am so thoroughly interested in Montessori.

Pipe cleaner beading threading. Great fine motor skills activity. R inserts the pipe cleaners into the holes of the salt shaker and then threads beads onto the pipe cleaners.

This is how the activity looks once it has been completed. The foam letters are presented on the tray in a mixed pile and R places them in order to match the word in the photo. I created a “love” tray for our Valentine’s Day thee as well as a similar tray with his name in the photo.

Open ended art tray. Paper, glue and lots of miscellaneous materials such as tissue paper, crepe paper, confetti hearts, jewel-like stickers and mini foam letters. This has been R’s absolute favourite this month. He created four pictures within the first twenty minutes of seeing the new trays for the first time.

Pouring confetti hearts from one glass to another.

Creating the lette V on our homemade geo board.

Letter V push-pin activity. Fine motor and literacy. R traces the letters by inserting the push pin into the printed page. This was part of the wonderful set of Valentine’s printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler. This site has a wealth of ideas and free printables or you can purchase the entire set of Pre-K printables. That’s what I chose to do and we have a folder for each letter, full of printables and activities.

So there you have it. Our trays for February. They’ve been a big hit.