My Obstacle Course: Engage, Encourage and Empower

A fun, structured, systematic way to work on your child's strengths and weaknesses at home!

Math

Jelly Bean Sorting

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Jelly Bean Sorting

This is the jelly bean variation of a My Obstacle Course Sorting Station Activity that I have posted on before. Here is the link for the one using Colored Marshmallows.

Set Up:

The set up is super simple, requiring only white printer paper, a marker, some jelly beans and a container. (See below about the container I am using.) This is a great way to link color words with colored items and basic skills of sorting according to a certain characteristic, counting and analyzing data.

Questions:

You can use the same question cards used with Jelly Bean Graphing. Click on this link for a PDF file: Jelly Bean Questions.

Add On:

You can also add some cards with the color words on them (or even use something like Candy Land cards or make your own color cards using sticker dots – Just thought of this idea as I was writing so look for a post on this soon!) and they could flip them over two at a time and add those colors together (ex. pink + orange= __. The equation for this based on the completed sort below would be 2+3=5.).

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Jelly Bean Sorting
Jelly Bean Sorting Completed

Fun Container:

The seasonal aisle of the grocery store is a great place to find fun, thematic items that can also help build basic academic skills such as this cute M&M container. It is a tin that pulls apart and holds two small packages of M&M candy. Once opened, the candy can be sorted by color, used to make a graph, used to make basic addition equations based on color (ex. green + red = ___ ), or paired with some dice for addition or subtraction practice.

M&M container with two fun size packages

Don’t throw away these little containers just yet! They are perfect for use in future My Obstacle Courses to hold small items for counting, sorting or graphing like coins, jelly beans (like I did in the photo above), buttons, beans, etc.

Inside of the container - perfect for holding small items!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Jelly Bean Graphing

I may as well call this “Jelly Bean Math Week” because there are so many ways to use this seasonal item to build a wide variety of math skills. (I’m sure they are around all year, I just associate them with this time of year.) Grab some jelly beans (and a toothbrush) because here I go!

Jelly Bean Graphing

My Obstacle Course station activity: Jelly Bean Graphing

A simple sheet of white printer paper, a marker, a package of jelly beans and a plastic egg are all you need to make a jelly bean graphing station for your child’s My Obstacle Course.

Jelly beans contained in plastic egg until it's time for the activity.

For this station activity, make your graph sheet and place some jelly beans inside the plastic egg. You can choose specific amounts or just pour some in to see what you get. I frequently choose some colors to have the same amounts to work on the concept of “equal” as well as having certain colors be empty for the concept of “Zero.” It is up to you but after doing this sort of thing for a while, you may find yourself becoming more strategic with things like this to use as teaching opportunities.

At the station, your child will open the plastic egg, pour out the jelly beans and sort them into the correct columns by color. When all of the jelly beans have been sorted, talk about what they notice. Click here for a PDF file containing question cards for the jelly beans. As in the other graphing posts I’ve done, I like to cut apart the questions so he can select the question. (Here is a link to print out questions: jellybeanquestions) That said, he is working on writing answers to questions in school so I may modify them a bit so there is room for him to write his answer.

Jelly Bean Graph Completed

This simple activity paired with some question cards allows you to work on analyzing data. The bag of jelly beans provides enough jelly beans for more of the same or can be used with other activities. Stay tuned because there are more to come!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

April Themed Money Match-Up

I have to say that after doing this for a while, I have found myself noticing things that I’ve probably seen a million times but have never really “seen.” This next find is one of those things. I had just picked up some new markers for Andrew in the school supply aisle of our grocery store when I saw these garage sale stickers.

Garage Sale Stickers and Calendar Cutouts

I was not planning a garage sale, however I did like all of the stickers with the different money amounts on them. They would be perfect for counting coins! I placed the stickers on some calendar cutouts (Post-It Notes, index cards or any paper works, I just like how the cutouts make it so easy to be thematic.) and got to work on the rest of the activity.

Since Easter is just around the corner, I paired the sticker-ed cutouts with some plastic Easter eggs to not only make it more colorful and fun, but also help him build fine motor skills (by pulling the parts of the egg apart to open it).

Basket of plastic eggs

I grabbed a coin jar and filled some eggs with coins that added up to 25 cents, 50 cents, 75 cents and $1.00. I chose to do 6 eggs and mixed them in with empty eggs to make it more of a game.

This egg has two quarters which add up to 50 cents.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Hunt, Add, Match

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Hunt for the eggs with coins. Add the coins and match them with a flower that has the same amount.

At the station, he has to find the eggs that had coins in them, open it, pour out the coins and we count them together. When we figure out the amount, we match up the egg and coins with a cutout that has the same amount.

One dime and 3 nickels add up to 25 cents.
Two quarters add up to 50 cents.

If these amounts are too high for your child, there are blank stickers to write on or you can bypass the stickers altogether and write out amounts they are ready for, perhaps starting off with just pennies and counting by ones or using only one kind of coin to work on counting by 5’s or 10’s. Here are links to two posts I did on coin counting and why it is important to make sure they understand coin values before expecting them to be able to count mixed coins. Coin Counting Part 1 , Coin Counting Part 2

I hope I have shown you how easy it is to combine a few basic things to create a fun and purposeful activity to build developmental and academic skills? I cannot wait to see what else is out there waiting for me to notice! 🙂

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Find Baby Butterfly

This is an adaptation of a game that I used with my students when I taught kindergarten. It was called “Where’s Uncle Ugboo?” and it was basically a hide and seek game using construction paper umbrellas with letters of the alphabet on them and a small picture of Uncle Ugboo that I would “hide” under an umbrella. We would go around and the students had to identify the letter before they could lift it to see if he was under the umbrella. If they found him, they got to hide him the next time. They loved it and it was a fun way to practice letter identification.

I decided to try it with Andrew and was so excited because I realized how simple this was to make with cutouts or index cards and also the whole idea that I was not limited to just doing letters. I could make the game so it was building on whatever concepts he was ready for, including (but not limited to) numbers, words, colors, shapes, emotions, thematic vocabulary words (think science and social studies vocabulary!), etc.

I used some large butterfly cutouts, wrote or drew what I wanted him to identify and then set them out at one of My Obstacle Course stations. (Note: When making this game, I recommend using something thicker than paper like calendar cutouts or index cards so that they cannot see the baby butterfly underneath.)

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Find Baby Butterfly

Letter Identification:

Letter Identification Game Set Up
Baby Butterfly

I placed a small butterfly cutout (the baby butterfly) underneath one of the larger ones. That is it for set up!

Hiding Baby Butterfly

When playing this game, he has to identify whatever is on the butterfly or card before he can lift it up to see if the baby butterfly is underneath.

Lifting the cutout to see if it's there!

Numbers:

Multiples Of 7 Game Set Up

Baby butterfly is hiding under the number 14

Sight Words or Vocabulary Words:

Sight Word Game Set Up
Hiding under the word "know"

You can also modify it so that there are a few baby butterflies hidden or you could play it a few times if they find it right away. Super simple, fun and helps build skills. I love activities that incorporate all of those things!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Math Fact Sorting

This is a station activity that I made last year to help Andrew work on his math facts. It was a huge hit with him and it is another example of how easy it is to tweak something so that a child can demonstrate their knowledge.

Intelligibility and legibility DO NOT indicate intelligence!

He was not able to write numbers at the time we did this so it gave him the opportunity to show what he knew without something like fine motor weakness or intelligible language standing in the way. If he was only allowed to show what he knew by filling out worksheets or using flashcards in the traditional way, it would have appeared as though he didn’t know the answer. I would have been expecting him to be able to show or tell me the answer in ways he was not able to. By making small modifications to something very basic, he was able to demonstrate to me that he understood what the equation was asking as well as showing he knew how to figure out the answer. It was not something he had memorized at the time and it was fascinating to watch him figure out the answer and place the butterfly into the pail.

(Note: When doing something like this, I like to have manipulatives available for him to use as counters if he needs them (I’ve used buttons, beans, pennies, Cheerios, Goldfish Crackers and anything else that he can use to count.). It is really important for me that he understands what the equation means rather than force him to memorize something without that understanding.)

 

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Sort the equations by their sum.

I started with a package of multi-colored butterfly cutouts (I used these because it is spring but you can use whatever you have – Post-It Notes, index cards, note paper, etc.)…

Butterfly Cutouts

and wrote some math facts that were appropriate for what he was ready for and working on in school. I chose to focus on four different sums (4, 5, 6 and 7) and picked 3 equations per sum to write on the cutouts.

 

Butterfly Cutouts with Math Facts

That’s all it takes and the station is ready!

When he got to the station, he flipped over the cutout, read the equation…

First cutout flipped over

and placed it into the correct pail.

"4+2" gets placed into the "6" pail

Repeat with the next cutout.

Next cutout flipped over
"3+4" gets placed into the "7" pail.

Continue until all of the cutouts have been placed into the correct pails.

All equations sorted

Crawl and Sort

This is the actual station that he did last year and is the same as shown above with the addition of the carpet runner to incorporate crawling and movement. He started at one end, picked up one equation, crawled down to the other end of the runner and placed it into the correct pail. He crawled back and repeated this until all of the equations were sorted. It’s a total win-win because he thinks it is fun to be moving around while I know that he is working on things that are important for his brain development.

Equations placed at one end of carpet runner for "Crawl and Sort."
Sums and pails at the other end of the carpet runner

(Here is a link to a previous post that includes what the carpet runner looks like in action and why I use it. The carpet runner part of the post is towards the end.)

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

 

Colored Marshmallow Graphing

I love it when I find something that is fun and inexpensive that can be used in many different ways and the colored marshmallows I wrote about last week are another one of those things!

Here is a My Obstacle Course station activity to build the math skills of graphing and interpreting data with colored marshmallows. This is something that is great because each time you set it up, the results are different. I find that introducing a skill but using different materials that are random really helps to keep Andrew engaged and he learns about the concept and how to apply it with different things.

When I was teaching, I always felt like graphing was a bit too abstract, throwing children into interpreting data from a graph without really knowing where the data is coming from. Depending on the school or teacher, there may be more emphasis on providing opportunities for children to graph things that the they can relate to but an activity like this really allows them to be part of the process from start to finish, being able to move and place each item where it belongs and then answering questions.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Marshmallow Graphing

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Colored Marshmallow Graphing

For this station activity, I used a sheet of white printer paper to make my graph, placed some colored mini-marshmallows in a muffin cup and provided some follow-up questions to help build math vocabulary and work on analyzing the data, aka marshmallows.

Colored Marshmallow Graph

When at the station, place the marshmallows in the correct row according to their color. Some children will dump the marshmallows out and then place them randomly. Andrew favors doing it one color at a time. When all of the marshmallows have been placed in the correct row, the graph is complete. I like to talk a little bit about what we notice – Which color have the most? Which color has the least? I also use the question strips that I made for marshmallow sorting. (marshmallow questions) I cut them apart and place them in a bucket so he can pick one question at a time instead of being overwhelmed with a whole sheet of questions. Small thing to do but it makes a huge difference in attention and motivation.

Another simple and easy way to build math skills using something fun, easy to find and inexpensive :).

Engage, Encourage and Empower!