We do number and letter activities often and so I wanted to create an inexpensive, but durable mat for number/letter matching, recognition, and counting. I ended up making this simple mat with a rug from Ikea that had never found a good spot in our home. I was super pleased with its simplicity and the boys have enjoyed playing with it. Right now they mostly enjoy the counting side and have shown exceptional preference for counting edible things, like Cheerios. But I like that it’s pretty open ended in how it can be used and can continue to be used down the road for more advanced activities as well, like…
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Wooden Color Blocks
It may come as a surprise to a lot of people who know me, but I actually do love color! However, I am admittedly quite picky about it. When introducing colors to our little one, I wanted them to be vibrant and beautiful. I wanted them to be something I also enjoyed looking at and playing with alongside him. So, this was a fun project to be able to create the shades and hues that I wanted with the remainder of the block set we used for our wooden letter blocks. I’d like to expand these colors as Graham gets older to do even further gradient sorting. But for now…
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Color Play with Plastic Bottles
We’ve been on a color kick lately. And since I cleaned out the refrigerator in the garage today and found a collection of plastic bottles in need of recycling, I felt inspired to transform them into a set of colorful, rainbow bowling pins. I thought it would be a free, fun, new to us learning through play activity, where I could casually narrate our play and name the colors as we made them and knocked them down, etc. But things don’t always go as we plan. Graham very much enjoyed the process of making them and the magic of color theory basics. He enjoyed setting them up, however when I…
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Wooden Alphabet Blocks
I love using wood for learning materials because of their durability, their aesthetic, their versatility, but it can get costly very quickly. So I started making various learning materials out of these inexpensive tumbling blocks and have been so pleased with them. MATERIALS Jenga Blocks/Generic Wooden Tumbling Blocks Sheet of Adhesive Mailbox Letters INSTRUCTIONS Though it hardly seems necessary… Peel and stick. (If the sticker adhesive begins to fade I plan to seal these with a coat of Mod Podge, but so far they’ve held up just fine without it.) I began with just one sticker per block, but have since gone back and added a second letter to the…
