Math

Apple Themed Tally Mark Crawl and Match

I created this Crawl and Match activity because I wanted Andrew to begin understanding what tally marks were, how they were written and how to count them. The Crawl and Match concept can be used to reinforce a wide variety of skills and concepts, this is just one example of how I did it to build a specific math concept.

Other Concept Examples To Use With Crawl and Match:

letter matching (uppercase and lowercase)
word and picture matching (this would even be a cute way to match up classmates pictures and names)
color and color word or item matching
shape and shape word or item matching
beginning sound matching
ending sound matching
rhyming word matching
opposite word matching
number and number word matching
coins and their value matching
math fact and sum/difference/product/quotient matching
state and capital matching

I could go on and on with examples but wanted to give you some other ideas 🙂 .

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Tally Mark Crawl and Match

I used a package of apple-shaped calendar cutouts and wrote the regular numbers on half of the cutouts and wrote the corresponding tally marks on the other half.Â I explained to him that each tally mark represented “1” and every fifth mark went diagonally across the other 4.

What this station looked like at our house.

He would choose an apple with tally marks on it…

and crawl down to match them with the apple that had the correct number.Â Crawling requires cross patterning of the body (moving one side along with the other – like using right arm and left leg and then left arm and right leg to crawl forward) which activates both sides of the brain during this learning process – pretty cool, huh! 🙂

Apple cutouts with numbers on them at the other end of Crawl and Match.

I really like reinforcing concepts like this because it is physical work for him while building an academic skill. The distance between the items to match gives him time to process the information on his way down to make his choice.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

How Many Apples On The Apple Tree?

This My Obstacle Course station activity is so simple yet it helps to build math skills and fine motor skills – bonus!! While I know that apples are usually picked off of an apple tree, for the purpose of this station activity, we are going to be putting apples back on the tree. I guess you could put a whole bunch of “apples” on the tree and have your child “pick” a given number off of the tree using the tweezers. Either way, a great opportunity to build these skills!

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: How Many Apples On The Apple Tree?

I used a brown sheet of paper and drew the outline of a tree. I gathered up some red puffs to represent apples and set out a pair of tweezers. The object of this activity is to give your child a number and have them use the tweezers to grasp the “apples” and put them on the tree. I like to use tweezers because it helps to build the same muscles needed for handwriting and drawing.

P1040900 — My tree with red cotton puff apples.

P1040904 — A stack of calendar numbers can be used to provide the number.

There are several different ways to get the number:

just pick a number (this wouldnâ€™t work as well for us since Andrew prefers to see things if he is going to â€œbuyâ€ into it, but thatâ€™s just us)
roll a die or two dice and have your child count the dots and put that many apples on the tree
use dominos and have your child flip over a domino, count the dots and put that many apples on the tree
use calendar numbers by choosing a few that are appropriate for your child, turn them over and have your child flip them one at a time, say the number and put that many apples on the tree

This activity helps build number recognition and allows the child to demonstrate their understanding without needing to have intelligible speech.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Apple Themed One To One Correspondence

Last week I shared how to make your own “Apple” book using a cute, thematic note pad and some basic facts about apples. Today I’d like to share some ways to use this same apple themed note pad (shown below) to build number skills.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Show How Many Apples

I created this activity a few years ago to help build Andrew’s understanding of numbers and the amounts that they represent. I decided to begin by combining the numbers with concrete items, in this case, red cotton puff “apples.” I wrote out the number and included the word “apple” on a page and provided the “apples” for him to distribute. At first we did this in order to build number sequencing and then I changed it up by only including some of the pages, not necessarily putting them in order from least to greatest. This allowed me to see if he understood what the numbers represented by showing me without needing to have intelligible speech to do so.

Note: I had a 6th grade teacher who was a stickler on labeling what it was we were referring to. If we didn’t state it as part of the answer, she would say, “5 what? Chickens?!” Her insistence on this has stuck with me I guess :).

P1010269 — Red apple puff one to one correspondence

P1010267 — Red apple puffs matched with numbers.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Match the Sticker Card with the Correct Number

I like to start building math concepts with actual objects that he can physically manipulate to demonstrate his knowledge. Once I have a sense that he gets it, we move on. For this concept, we moved on to cards I made that had specific amounts of stickers on them. His job was to match up the sticker card with the number card. This would require him to count accurately in order to match them up properly.

This was so fascinating for me because I got to see how he approached counting – Was he pointing at each sticker or doing it in his head? Did he have a systematic approach or was it more random? Did he start from the top and move across or from the bottom and go up and around?

There were times when he would double count or skip a sticker and match the card up with the wrong one. Sometimes I would ask him if he was sure or ask him to count again but other times I would let him figure it out when he wound up with two sticker cards at the same number. If needed, I would bring out the “apples” for him to place on the stickers to see what the correct answer was. What started out as a really basic one to one correspondence activity turned out to give me a great deal of information and taught him some analyzing and problem solving skills.

This is an activity that takes no more than 10 minutes to create with a pad of paper, a marker, some puffs and/or stickers yet helps build some fundamental math skills.

Modification:

If this activity is too basic for your child, you can adapt it by writing equations on some and sums/differences/products/quotients on other pages for them to match up. I would also begin building these skills with items like the “apple” puffs that your child can manipulate to demonstrate their understanding of what they are being asked to do. I know that fact memorization is part of learning and I am glad that I don’t have to carry around puffs with me to figure things out as an adult (now picturing that cracks me up!) but it is really important that children have a good understanding of what equations mean.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Mini Apple Cut-Outs

I’m going to try something different in my upcoming posts. I’ve been feeling like I’m not providing enough prep time by posting on thematic/seasonal things as the theme or season is taking place (would love to hear thoughts on this!). I’ve decided to try bunching some ideas I have that utilize similar materials instead of doing separate posts so that you have more lead time. Hope this helps!!

Mini Apple Cut-Outs

I discovered themed mini cutouts at my teacher supply store and I have to say that I use them all of the time. They are great for reinforcing themes and because they are small, they also help to build fine motor pinching and grasping skills. They do not make the plain apples anymore shown in my photos (that I know of) but the “Dots on Black Apples” from Creative Teaching Press are available and work just as well.

In this post I will share ways I have incorporated them into My Obstacle Course station activities with Andrew so you can see how easy and versatile they are while helping to build academic skills.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Apple Sorting by Color

P1040884 — Apple sorting by color - red, green and yellow

Note: Looking back on this, I would use a white crayon or silver photo marker (or different color paper) and write the color names to add a literacy aspect to this. Doing this would allow the child to see “red” where there is a red apple, “yellow” where there is a yellow apple and “green” where there is a green apple. You can benefit from my experience on this one!

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Apple Graphing

For this station I took a sheet of white construction paper, wrote my title across the top, glued the sample apples on the left-hand side and drew some lines to divide the graphing space. I set out the apples I wanted him to sort and graph and it was all set.

Note – I chose a specific amount of each kind of apple (ex. 4 red apples, 1 green apple and 6 yellow apples) so I knew that we would have a “most” and “least” amount of apples. Other graphs we have done have incorporated “equal” or “the same” amounts.

Andrew labeling the graph with "Least" and "Most" cutouts.

You could take this one step further and have your child glue the apples onto the paper. I chose not to have that as part of this station because my focus was on building math graphing skills and knew that Andrew’s enthusiastic gluing would have taken away from that.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Apple Patterns

For patterning activities, I begin by starting out the pattern and provide the pieces necessary to complete the pattern properly. Once I feel like he gets the pattern, I throw in some pieces that don’t fit to get him thinking. He can show me that it does not fit by not using it and explain to me why it does not fit in the pattern.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Apple Tree Number Order

This is great for building number recognition and number order. I took a sheet of brown construction paper, drew a tree (isn’t it pretty? 🙂 ), made some dots in rows to indicate where the apples should go and wrote numbers on the apple cut-outs (we were working on 30-40 here).

Super simple activity! Here is a sample conversation of how I would do this with a child:

“Can you find the number 30? Here it is! Put that one on the first dot. What comes next? 31. Great! Let’s keep going until all of the apples are in order on the tree. Done! Let’s count to make sure that they are all in order. 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40. Good Job!!”

See how useful these little guys are? Love them!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Apple Themed “Make This Number”

This was one of my favorite math activities to do with Andrew when he was building basic addition knowledge. It is really such a simple idea but was always a hit with him because it was always different whether by theme or the number he was to find.

To make it, I used my pad of apple themed note paper (you could also use index cards) and placed some apple stickers on them like playing cards to make cards from 1-9. (Playing cards work well also by changing the Ace card to a #1 card which I actually did with a deck of cards we weren’t using.)

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Make This Number

The object of the game “Make This Number” is to combine two cards to create a specific number. I like to think of this as beginning algebra because I provide the answer (the given number) and one of the addends and he has to figure out what the other addend is. He used the stickers to count or you could also provide some manipulatives to help (red cotton puffs would be perfect for this theme).

Directions: Combine the cards to make __. There will be 3 pairs.

The station activity pictured below is set up for him to combine the cards to make 7 (My apologies for the poor photograph. This was taken a few years ago before I knew how to shoot them so they show up well.). I set out the cards 1-6, knowing that when paired they will make 7.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Apple Themed "Make This Number"

Andrew worked through this and found that pairing 1 and 6, 4 and 3, and 2 and 5 would each give him 7.

Station completed with cards matched up to make the number 7.

I love this activity because it really helped Andrew to build a strong foundation of addition facts (and even subtraction because he had to figure out what was missing). Using the cards 1-9, you can help your child build math facts up to 10.

Extension: I will do a post on this because this is something I am going to do for Andrew but will give a blurb here for those that are ready. This could also be done using calendar numbers for building multiplication facts. Provide the number and the child has to match up the pair of factors (the numbers multiplied together). Ex. For the product (answer in multiplication) 24, I would set out 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24. Once I knew they had the idea, I would also probably throw in a number that does not fit, kind of like an oddball to see if they could figure it out.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Sports Themed My Obstacle Course Idea #3

Enchanted Learning Website – Sports Theme

I have mentioned this website before (click here for previous Enchanted Learning post) because I love how easy they make it to be thematic while building academic skills. It is a subscription site with some free materials but I have found it to be worth the fee for what I do with Andrew and My Obstacle Course.

My intention is to provide you with some alternatives for what would typically be worksheet, pencil/paper activities. If your child is into that, than by all means go for it! I have just found that with Andrew, the more engaged he is, the more willing he is to put time and energy into building skills in all areas.
I will often cut the pages apart to create crawl and matching stations or combine them with Scrabble letters to get him more involved with actually making words.

Based on the activity sheets that they have on the page I’ve linked to above (there are lots!), these are some ways I would incorporate them into a sports themed My Obstacle Course:

Matching pictures with words from the “Sports Word Wheel” or the “Match Sports Words with Pictures” pages (I would cut them apart and combine with clothespins)
Combining syllables to make sports words (combine with crawl and match station)
Filling in missing letters to form sports words (I’d use the pictures and combine them with Scrabble letters)
Unscrambling letters to form sports words (I’d use the pictures and combine them with Scrabble letters)
Using the sports question page, I would cut apart the words, set them out and use it as a questioning station where I ask him the question and have him choose the correct word.
ABC order page, I would cut apart the words and have him actually put them in ABC order. If this was a challenge, I would include a written out alphabet to use as a reference.
Compound words – I’d either cut them apart or use this sheet as a sample and write out the word parts on small index cards or Post-It notes so he can combine them to form the words.
There are also a ton of anagram activity pages, which use the letters from one word to create another word. I would use Scrabble letters with something like this and would only do a few anagrams at a time as a station, starting with some smaller, easier words to introduce this to him.
I would use the “Sports Alphabet Code” page as is.
I would cut out the words at the top of the Venn Diagram page but would keep the bottom section as is and have him sort the words into the correct section.

Note: I do not have any affiliation with Enchanted Learning. I discovered their site while teaching 3rd grade, loved using it with my students for research purposes and found it to be extremely helpful when working with Andrew at home.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!!

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