Tag Archives: sorting

Super Sorting Pie Fun

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We have done quite a bit of sorting  but this pie was just too cute not to try. I was hoping it would extend her sorting capabilities and it did!

She loved the tweezers. I set up the pie shell with an activity card in the bottom and Daisy played and sorted the fruit into the correct sections. She started off using the tweezers with a fist grip and changed to the pincer grip without any interference from me..yeah!

This Super Sorting Pie comes with 3 double sided activity cards, 60 fruit counters, 2 Jumbo tweezers and an activity guide. Honestly, I ignored the guide until I sat down to write this post because it was so self explanatory.

Daisy loves playing with this pie while in her kitchen. We keep it out of Rose’s reach just because she is at that wonderful dumping stage. When she sees it out… it ends up on the floor. It has become one of those go to activities when Daisy wants some time by herself.

Here she is counting and organizing, the numbers 5-10 are on the other side of this activity card. The other activity cards include, sorting by colour and fruit and sorting by fruit. Daisy sorts by one type and them reorganizes and starts again using another system. The abundance of fruit allows her to sort out of the pie at the same time. You can see here she does not always choose to use the tweezers.

The activity guide suggests many different activities including:

  • Match Me- match a selected fruit and line up the pairs
  • Fruit Picking Fun- say the name of a fruit and colour, asking the children to pick out the fruit using tweezers
  • Fruit Patterns- make a pattern and ask the children to repeat it
  • What Comes Next?- make a pattern, say it out loud and ask the children to say “what comes next?”
  • One of these Things is Not Like the Others- pick three fruits that are alike and one that is different and ask the children to find the one that is different and explain why.
  • Count Your Colours- Say a number and a colour and ask the children to pick those fruits out of the pie and count them .

If you would like a great sorting game I would recommend this Super Sorting Pie. It is versatile and great value!

Any one for fruit pie?

Card and Gift Making

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To combat Christmas business we have been finding quiet time to make cards and gifts. Daisy has been set up with blank cards, stamps, stickers, markers and asked to create cards for friends at daycare. This request has been met with an enthusiastic burst of creativity.

I was working on our family Christmas cards (yes they will be late!) while Daisy worked away beside me.

The 2 flowers in red, a photo on scrap booking paper on a blank card. Luckily I like things simple.

Her sense of pride for creating these cards is infectious. Rose joined in when she woke up from her nap and used bingo markers to decorate Christmas trees on her cards.

We enjoyed making tree ornaments from very simple materials. For friends Daisy made a kit containing beads, bells and a glitter stem put into a gift bag. I seem to have collected far too many! These we added to a candy cane and the card. Now her friends can make an ornament for their tree at home.

I enjoyed reading a post from Cheryl’s Child Care Blog today about giving children ownership of their decorating. While I loved stylized trees before I had kids, I now love seeing huge pom pom decorations, random pipe cleaners bent into strange shapes and coloured circles of card adorning our tree. Themes trees are over rated!

Here Daisy is counting and sorting and bagging. A little sneaky math thrown in.

Fun with Memory Caps

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Memory Caps

First things first: let them play! I have learnt this. If I want to sneak in a little structured learning I have to let exploration happen first. Here is the exploration:

What is under here mummy?

Anyone for tea? Cheers

A cap tower

New York Statue (Daisy’s words)

Genuine statue (again her words- don’t know where that came from!!)

Getting bigger..

and bigger.

I supported the sneaky learning by colouring a piece of card with crayon boxes the same colour as the shapes under the memory caps.

On the other side of the card I added a 1-12 grid.

I can then just slot the card in the box with the game, for storage.

The colour matching activity was not a hit so we ignored that and flipped over to the numbers.

This had more interest. We discovered a fun way to stack the caps. Yes I was joining in at this point.

Here is the skinny on Memory Caps:

A matching wooden manipulative toy. Mix up the geometric shapes on the routed spaces on the board and hide them with the bright, red caps. The players choose two caps each turn to reveal a match. Develops memory and matching skills. Made from Eco-friendly rubberwood and stained with low VOC aniline dyes. Measures: 11.25″W x 9.5″L x 1.5″H. Ages 3+.

Learning Opportunities:

Math:

  • Discuss shape properties
  • Counting
  • Sorting and making patterns

Art

  • What makes a statue? What do we like to look at statues? Those shapes go together well, why?

This post is part of a special blogaversary link party ”Add A Little Learning To Your Play” blog hop

Congratulations to Jillian A Mom With A Lesson Plan , one busy year!

Here are the participating blogs: