Math Catapults

Mini catapults made from a wooden clothespin, wooden block and elastic are so much fun! They take practise and perseverance to learn to manipulate and can easily be used as tools in games. 

We used the catapults with a grid today to encourage number writing and adding. 

The children used the catapults to fire a foam circle at the scoreboard, record their points, and then add them together to see who had the most. 

The children were highly motivated to try and get their foam circle to land on high numbers; they knew the person with the most points won the game. 

Later on in the day the children wanted a more challenging game board. They wanted some areas to be worth zero points and one special spot to be worth a lot. The largest number we could brainstorm was ten million! 

What a fun game! We are going to try using an alphabet grid next. 

Locks and Keys

In order to help our children strengthen their fine motor skills we placed a number of little locks and keys out at a table today. The keys and locks were mixed together and the children had to experiment with matching a key to its rightful lock through trial and error. This activity took much patience and persistence on the part of our children as it was time consuming to try key after key in the same little lock. Many children were intrigued with the idea and spent a considerable amount of time engaged in the activity.

Some Ontario Curriculum Expectations this activity fulfilled include:

2.2 demonstrate persistence while engaged in activities that require the use of both large and small muscles (e.g., tossing and catching beanbags, skipping, lacing, drawing)

4.1 begin to demonstrate control of small muscles in activities at a variety of learning centres (e.g., sand, water, visual arts centres) and when using a variety of materials or equipment (e.g., using salt trays, stringing beads, painting with paintbrushes, drawing, cutting paper, using a keyboard, using a mouse, writing with a crayon or pencil)

4.2 demonstrate spatial awareness by doing activities that require the use of small muscles