Cereal Math and O'Clocks

We have managed to stick with a consistent school schedule around here lately. It's been great!

Delaney has continued to practice 1:1 correspondence. She can now count out up to 4 objects without help...as in "give me 4 of those" and understanding that she has to do more than count to 4 while giving me a handful. Our current goal is up to 6, and she does this with about 75% accuracy. I think once she gets to 6, the lightbulb will switch on, and she will grasp the concept clearly.

We used flashcards and Kix cereal to practice the other day.

 

 The dots on the cards help her place the right amount of cereal on the cards.

Then we count them, touching each piece as we count.

Sophie was very interested and watched her big sister demonstrate her skills.

We used a plain piece of paper with 6 boxes drawn on it, and numbered each box.

She took some cute bug stickers and we "caught bugs", putting the correct number of bugs in each box, or "bug cage."

I had her trace the numbers as well.

Delaney is also beginning to learn to tell time, and can read the O'clocks independently and 30's with just a little help. We played a game with some little pretend clocks in which I showed her a time and she had to tell me what time it was, and what we do at that time of day, then she got to act it out.

 It's 6:00am! Time to wake up!

It was a lot of fun, and she has an excellent understanding of what we do at various times of day, as well as correctly telling the time.

Sophie enjoyed it too.

I found all of the materials for these activities around the house...paper, stickers, index cards, cereal, and markers. The clocks were in a school bin, but those are pretty easy to find in most toy or learning sections of a store. Honestly, I made up the activities as I went along, knowing what I wanted to teach her, and figuring out which methods were going to work at the time. I knew she would like the Kix activity...food is always a winner. The bug catching began as a simple "trace the number" activity and evolved from there as her attention did not wander and she was willing and interested in counting some more. Our "what time is it" game was Delaney's invention. I had put the clocks in our blue bin for the week, offered her a few examples, and she took the game from there.

Teaching is so easy when your students want to learn! :)