Holiday Sweaters

A fun activity this time of year is to decorate ugly holiday sweaters with a variety of loose parts! This activity promotes math as children create patterns on the sweaters. An interesting discussion of the differences between area and perimeter usually emerges as children use strings of beads to outline the sweater while filling it in with seasonal trinkets.

           

Click here for a copy of the free printable sweater page.
 

 

Ten Easy Holiday Math Activities

The holidays are such a lovely time of year to spend with children! However the last few weeks before the winter break can be hectic. Here are ten easy to assemble activities that can infuse playtime with math by capturing the magic of the season! Many of the seasonal loose parts included in these photos were found at the local dollar store. Enjoy!

1. Count the Presents - offer children mini presents (or other seasonal trinkets including bells or ornaments) and number cards. Encourage children to match the corresponding number of objects to the cards. Children can also place presents on a laminated ten frame and write a corresponding addition or subtraction sentence using a dry erase marker.

2.  Holiday Sensory Bin with Mini Boxes - fill a sensory bin with seasonal trinkets and treasures. Add mini present boxes and encourage children to fill the boxes with different objects. Children can then use a hundreds grid to count how many objects fit in each box!

 

  

3. Catapult the Gingerbread Man to Safety - help mini Gingerbread Men land to safety over the river by firing them using catapults made from clothespins attached to blocks using elastics. This activity works fine motor muscles too!

4. Cookie Cutter Bell Count - display a collection of bells in a tray with a variety of seasonal cookie cutters. Challenge children to fill one cutter with bells and use a hundreds grid to count how many it holds. Which cutter holds the most? Least?

5. What's Inside the Presents? - fill different holiday boxes with loose parts. Encourage children to shake one at a time and estimate how many objects might be inside. They can then open the box and spill the objects out. Each object can be placed on a number grid and counted.

6. Fill a Tree with Trinkets - children can explore the concepts of area and perimeter by filling or outlining wooden trees (or other seasonal place mats or shapes) with a variety of bead strings, ribbons or small objects.

7. String a Pattern - secure a number of green pipe cleaners to a sturdy cardstock or cardboard base in the form of a tree. Encourage children to string beads to 'decorate' the tree using different patterns. Children can also count how many beads they use for each section.

 

8. How Many Elastics? - children can wrap a number of elastics around cookie cutters until they are filled. Encourage children to count how many times they wrap each elastic. For an added fine motor challenge have children remove the elastics one at a time.

9. Gingerbread House STEM Challenge - provide children with magnet shapes and challenge them to build an intricate gingerbread house. Ask them to search the room for various loose parts that will attach to the magnets and 'decorate' the house (e.g., here the staples in mini bows attract to the magnets).

10. Holiday Guessing Jars - fill glass jars with seasonal loose parts. Encourage children to estimate how many objects are in each jar. The objects can then be shaken out and counted using math tools such as number grids and ten frames.

 

 

Looking for a book to support holiday math learning? Check out my book Holiday Math! 

 

 

Seasonal Sensory Bin

We invited the children to explore some small seasonal objects in the sensory table. We were curious to see what they would do or create with the new materials. 

The children were very excited and spent much time discussing the characteristics of the objects with each other. 

We heard wonderful descriptors of the materials - shiny, bumpy, smooth, prickly, and glittery. 

The children pretended to wrap presents and give them to each other. 

They even decorated the tiny tree!

So much fun and so great for promoting collaboration and sharing too!

Exploring the Backyard in Winter

We have had some beautiful sunny weather around here lately - the perfect kind of weather for getting outside for some fresh air and playtime! We decided to check out the garden to see what the plants looked like in the middle of winter.

It was interesting to see that some of our plants are still green, even though we just had some recent snow fall. What really caught our eye however was how some of our flowers had dried on their stems and looked preserved from the fall. The white hydrangea was interesting...

...and so were the seeds from the tall, striped grass.

After carefully cutting some, we pressed them in between two sheets of clear contact paper and brought them inside for viewing on our light table.


  
The light below allowed us to see the parts of the plants in great detail - highlighting veins in the flowers and the intricateness of the seeds.

We thought it would be fun to gather more of the dried flowers and create art. We used brown, white, and gold acrylic paint.

Caleb carefully dipped the flowers in the paint and stamped them on his paper.

The thickness of the acrylic paint helped it to keep the print left by the dried flowers on the paper...

...and resulted in a gorgeous marble inspired piece of art! We liked how the colours we chose represented the colours we noticed in our garden this time of year!

Christmas Sensory Bin

We have Christmas fever around here now that the autumn decorations have been packed away. I decided to create a Christmas sensory bin for the kids to explore. I used trinkets that I found at the local dollar store (bells, bows, garland, beads, pompoms, etc.) and put them together with a mini Christmas tree, some gift bags and miniature boxes.

   

There was so much to look at and touch! The bright, shiny objects were very appealing!

It was fun to put together 'gifts' for people! The sensory box had much math potential as my son had to figure out what objects fit in the boxes, which box lids matched the box bottoms, which length of ribbon would fit around the boxes in order to secure them, and the different ways we could sort objects into the bins.

It was also fun to decorate the little miniature Christmas tree with the materials in the bin! This was a favourite activity since the kids have been asking when we are going to get our tree as they are so excited to decorate it. This gives them lots and lots of time to explore decorating in their own way.

Because the materials are so small, decorating the tree proves to be great fine motor practice too!