Summary: How to make a Manipulatives Kit for your little homeschool learners, out of things you already have around the house. #homeschoolpreschool #homeschoolkindergarten #earlylearning
Did you know that you can do this through playful activities, using things that you already have around the house?
When my daughter was little, we did our homeschooling with lots of fun, hands-on activities, and fit her learning time into our daily routine.
And she learned her basic early math skills through Math Play. Here's how we did it...
Making a Manipulatives Kit
Our little ones learn best through play. Basic math concepts, such as counting, sorting, bigger/smaller, same/different, adding, subtracting, etc can all be learned through play with manipulatives.
Manipulatives
can really be any small object that you have around your house.
Buttons, shells, rocks, etc, can be sorted by shape, color, or size, and
grouped into sets. This teaches early math concepts, as through play!
When
you are four, everything is math! Toys can be counted, towels sorted
and put into sets.
Cookie making became a lesson in adding and
subtracting, and beads can get sorted into patterns as well, while making
necklaces. Also, buttons, shells, rocks, sorted by shape, color, size,
what have you.
Even laundry could be sorted into sets. And the easy way to do this, is to make your own manipulatives kit.
This is frugal and simple to do. I just collected small items from around the house, and put them
into small containers.
You can include any of these in your kit:
1. Small toys or legos
2. Our old collection of buttons
2. Our old collection of buttons
3. Beads that we had from a holiday gift
4. Crayons
4. Crayons
5. Favorite shells and rocks from the beach
6. Pinecones from the yard
7. Or other small things that you find
These can be sorted too, by color, or can also be used to make patterns.
Example: Line up the crayons like this: red/blue/yellow....red/blue/yellow to make math patterns
Organizational Tips:
Use a small container, such as an old margarine tub for each category of manipulatives.
Then you could place each of these containers into a nice shoebox or basket.
This way, you can pull out one container at a time. This helps to control the clutter! You can limit the number of manipulatives used at one time.
For example:
I gave my daughter a container of buttons to sort, while I worked alongside her older cousin.
She could sort them by color, size, put them into sets, count them, and even practice adding them together.
I saved our manipulatives kit for use only during math play time. This made it special for my daughter. And she looked forward to math play time each day!
My daughter is now in her first year of college, taking precalulus. But it all started with simple math manipulatives play as a little one.
And don't forget all the great math learning that happens in the kitchen, too!
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Subtracting was my daughter's favorite, especially when we made brownies.
Who gets to eat the last piece, 1/4th?
The most important thing that your kids need to learn about early math is that, she can do it and....Math is fun!
More information on homeschooling preschool is here:
Are you homeschooling a high schooler this year? The details to plan your high school at home are here:
Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,
Betsy
Betsy is mom to her now college grad, whom she homeschooled through high school. She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, highschool,
college, gifted/2e and wrote -Homeschooling High School with College in Mind, 2nd Edition, She offers homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting, and has had some of her articles picked up by the Huffington Post.
college, gifted/2e and wrote -Homeschooling High School with College in Mind, 2nd Edition, She offers homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting, and has had some of her articles picked up by the Huffington Post.
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