Math

If you have been following my posts for a while, you know how much I love to use materials from www.EnchantedLearning.com. Here are some examples of what they have to help build math skills using the Halloween theme.

Note: This is just me, but I wanted to make the papers look a little more appealing so I trimmed them and glued them onto black construction paper before “laminating” them with clear contact paper. I did this so I could reuse them in future My Obstacle Courses as well as share them with Andrew’s teacher to use in his classroom. The construction paper and contact paper make them a bit more sturdy.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

This is one of my favorite station activities because it was one of those moments where I realized that I could take an item, alter it a bit from it’s original intended use and create activities with it to build skills and find out what Andrew knew.

I purchased a package of Halloween rings (either from Target or Michael’s, cannot remember) and used my scissors to cut off the ring part. (I don’t know about you but those rings were never very comfortable and I knew that Andrew would never wear them.) This left me with black and purple bats, black and orange spiders, and skulls (or skeletons).

I decided that I would have him sort these pieces and then count them. I got out the colorful Easter egg dying cups for him to sort into and wrote a label for each one so that he would see the words that went along with the item (color and object). I strategically chose a certain amount of each one and placed those in a container ready for him to sort.

Once at the station, he sorted the items.

When he was done sorting, I had him count how many of each. We used some dice to represent the number of items in the cup. We then decided which group had the most, the least and checked to see if any were the same or equal.

This was a favorite station for him and it has been modified throughout the years to work on addition, subtraction, patterning. This year it will be used to build multiplication and division skills (which is simply making “equal groups of”).

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

I first did a post sharing this activity in September (Apple Themed Make This Number) and wanted to share how easy it is to update this station activity simply by using some colored index cards and thematic or seasonal stickers.

For the autumn-themed number cards, I decided to use colors that represent autumn for me – red, orange and yellow (you could use any cards or colors that you’d like), and I used some apple, pumpkin and leaf stickers. If this is too busy for you or your child, you could use just one color of index card or one kind of sticker for a set of cards (ex. a set of apple number cards, a set of pumpkin number cards and/or a set of leaf number cards).

Here is the set of cards I made:

All you need to do for this activity is decide the total that you’d like your child to make, get pairs of cards that make that number, mix them up and set them out. (For a more detailed description of this station activity, check out my original post Apple Themed Make This Number.)

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Put two cards together to make 9

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Put two cards together to make 10

Alternative Activity Idea:

These cards could be put together in pairs to build concepts like “more” and “less” through questions like, “Which has more, apples or pumpkins?” Throw in a “greater than” or “less than” sign and you can build yet another skill! See how something so basic as colored index cards and seasonal stickers can really help to build math skills in a fun, kid-appealing way? Love it!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Calendar numbers make it super easy to build math skills such as number sequencing. I like to use calendar numbers because they are thematic according to the month or season, which makes building vocabulary relevant to the month we are in easier to weave into conversation as we are working with the numbers. Because the numbers in the calendar number set go up to 31, you have a good range of numbers to work with in a variety of easy to assemble station activities.

Using an index card, cutout, post-it note or even a piece of scrap paper to write some basic directions helps tremendously with a sequencing activity.

Basic Directions:

• What comes next?
• What comes before?
• What number is missing?
• Put these numbers in order from least to greatest.
• Fill in the missing numbers.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Fill in the missing numbers

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: What comes next?

For this activity, I begin the sequence of numbers and mix up the number choices above. This could be made more advanced by using a number pattern, such as 1, 3, 5, and have the child figure out what comes next – 7, 9, 11.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Putting numbers in order from 1-10.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Fill in the missing numbers.

Ordering and sequencing numbers skills are important for building a strong math foundation. Using something colorful that children can manipulate with almost no preparation time on your part helps make it a great station activity that children are more likely to engage in.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!