We're getting packed up for our trip to Clearlake, so I didn't have much time for activities this morning. We whipped up a quick activity that was kind of an independent matching activity for my little guy (that also helped strengthen his finger muscles)... which he did while I did dishes and cleaned up our kitchen.
Materials Needed: clothespins, long rope, two chairs (or trees if you do this outside), animal printouts (I used the printouts from pond bingo on the Pre-kinders website since I didn't have time to make my own), scissors, and a sharpie!
Directions:
1. Cut out your animals. My cards were about 2.5 inches x 2 inches.
2. Write numbers 1-15 or 1-20 on each set of cards. We made two sets. One set was ducks, one set was turtles.
3. Tie up your rope between 2 chairs. Make sure the rope is low enough that your child can reach it.
4. Have your little one clip the first set of cards up in order. Start simple and then make it harder. For example, we did 1-10 first, since I knew my son knew those numbers in order... at least pretty well.
5. Take the next card set and clip them to their matches.
We haven't done clothespin clipping before, so it was a bit hard for my little guy at first (at least mentally). He could totally do it... but didn't have much confidence. We only made it through 1-10 because although he had the numbers skills down (sequencing 1-10, counting up 1-10, and matching numbers 1-10), the clipping part psyched him out. I had to give a lot of encouragement until his confidence increased!
To practice clipping, we also hung up socks just for fun (we removed the academic portion of the activity and just had fun clipping). After all that hard work for our fingers, we enjoyed pond ice pops 😉 that we made yesterday. We totally used pond water (wink wink).
Skills this activity focused on:
- counting numbers 1-10 (or 20 if your child is ready for that)
- sequencing numbers 1-10
- matching numbers 1-10
- identifying big and little numbers
- squeezing clothespins to strengthen pincer grasp
Amber- Thank you! I don't homeschool, I just have fun being creative at home 🙂 My little guy starts preschool this Fall.
What a fun idea! I can tell you are such a great mom! It is VERY inspiring to see all that you do with your kids, I know they must LOVE it! Do you homeschool? Just curious! Great blog, keep up the awesome work!! -Amber seasontheday.blogspot.com