Alphabet Mats for Letter Recognition

Recently we have been working with different fonts to help children recognize that the same letter can look many ways. These letter templates are easy to use in matching games. Get a copy here!

Alphabet Mats 

Different Number Fonts

It's always interesting to see how children innovate math materials. This week we provided pages with the numbers 1 to 10 written in interesting fonts. We offered each child a dabber and two dice and encouraged them to create their own games.

Observing before interjecting allowed me to notice the amazing math repertoire children brought to their experiences as they manipulated the dice, examined the paper, made connections between the different representations of the numbers, and created their own games.

 

 

Click here for a copy of the number pages to use in your classroom! 

Letter Roll and Stamp

We wanted to continue to encourage children to practise identifying upper and lowercase letters. We placed letter dice, stampers, and letter cards out. 

The children were encouraged to roll the dice, identify the letters, and stamp the corresponding letters on the paper. 

We also went on a scavenger hunt and cut and pasted matching letters from magazines in order to explore how letters can be written using different fonts. 

Spring Matching Cards

An easy way to create durable matching cards is to affix pictures or stickers to metal juice can lids. Our children enjoyed finding as many matches as they could by turning the cards over and challenging themselves to find a matching pair. 

Alphabet Match

We placed alphabet cards and magnetic letters at the writing center today and encouraged the children to do some matching. 

As we matched we practised naming each letter and discussing whether or not the letter was upper or lower case. 

Colour Chip Rings

We used some simple materials to make colour chip rings - an assortment of paint chips, a whole puncher, and some shower curtain rings.

We explored one colour at a time. I spread each paint chip on the table and invited the kids to sequence them from darkest to lightest.

 

Once ordered we secured the sequence by punching a hole in the chips and putting them on a ring.

These colour collections can now be used to match and compare colours. In this picture we are finding the shade of blue that best matched Caleb's shirt.

  

Here Cadence is finding the shade of green that matches our center piece.

These rings would be great tools for an outdoor spring scavenger hunt, similar to when we matched colours in nature.

Matching Colours in Nature

Mrs. Bombardier had the neatest colour matching activity for the children to do today! Using a variety of fall inspired paint chips, she encouraged children to think about what they might find outside in our school yard that matched their given colour! 

Once the colours were distributed, the children were encouraged to search for fall objects along the fenced in area of the yard.

They paid such attention to detail in trying to determine whether objects were a close match to their original colour!

Greens...

Yellows...

Reds...

Browns...

Once inside we emptied the bags of fall objects that children have been bringing in for our science center.

We put sorting plates with colour chips in each one and invited the children to continue to sort the objects based on their colour.

What a wonderful way to appreciate and enjoy the wonderful Autumn colours around us!