How to Teach Even and Odd for Kids

I've been meaning to share {this little project} for months now.  Thanks for hanging with me through all the ups and downs of life (and pregnancy) that affect how often I get a {little} bit posted here!

I was working with Kay (months ago!) on her odd and even numbers.  She is my hands-on learner so I wanted a clear way for her to be able to "touch" the concept.

This is what I came up with:

 

Her tray has a box of numbers (up to 10 for now) with an ice cube tray and flower stickers.

As she counted out the flowers in the tray I had her put the next one as the "neighbor."  By that, I mean that she did one on the top row and then on on the bottom row.  

At the end, if all the flowers had a "neighbor" then it was an even number--because it worked in sets of 2's.
If a flower was left alone, it was an odd number.

 

And, the reason I'm sharing {this little project} is because it worked!  She figured out the concept and we were quickly able to move to larger numbers.

Yay for those {little} moments that make sense!

Happy 100th Day of the Year!

We've been gearing up this week to celebrate the 100th day of the year-today! It's a great excuse to LEARN and have a lot of FUN!

Jay learned about counting by tens using tiny pon poms to make ice cream cones with this worksheet.

This apples stamping worksheet was a fun way to count to 100. You just use the top of the pencil eraser and a stamp pad to color the "apples."


We graphed our jelly beans (from 2 Easter egg hunts) counting them by tens. These egg dishes work great for separating the colors.

And then compared how many of each color came from each hunt. The yellows won with the most at each hunt! Who knew that yellow was so popular?

I drew easter eggs of different colors on paper to separate the candy by the colors on the first hunt. As soon as they finished finding eggs we dumped all the candy into a big bowl and they separated the candy by color. After they were done we put the candy away and they haven't asked for it since! I think we will be doing this game again next year :)

We learned how to count by 10's using the first half of this tune (thanks Elspeth)
singing: "10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, that's how we count by tens."


This Hundred's chart is a great visual for all the counting. It's fun to cover some up and practice writing the missing numbers too.

And of course we finished off by doing a 100 piece puzzle!

I hope you have fun celebrating learning about 100 too!

100th day Party!!!

April 10th is the 100th day of the year, which mostly is an excuse to have a party around here.  Can you believe we are already 100 days into this year?  Don't worry, if you missed doing a party today you can pick another number. Tomorrow will be the 101st day of the year. There are a lot of fun activities you can do around a fun number. 

For today I decided we would do 100 MINUTES of 100s. I didn't know how far we would get down my list of ideas. We didn't make it all the way so that way there are some things to do for next year. The ones with pictures are the ones we actually had time for in our 100 minutes. The rest are just in case they are useful to you. We didn't get to them...yet :)

Of course, we began at 1:00

Here are some ideas for your own NUMBER PARTY:
*Take 100 steps (counting as you go)
*Write up to 100 LINK
* Put 100 frogs on 10 lily pads

*sort 100 jelly beans
*Do the 50 states puzzle and name the 50 state capitals

*make the numbers all the way to 100 from Rummikub pieces (this is my favorite game so we have 2 sets-but we ran out of numbers towards the end. It turned out ok though. We used lifesavers for 0's and worked on it until our 100 minutes were up. You could also use UNO cards.)

*write 100

*Pile up 100 pennies and measure them.
*Write 100 words you can read/spell

*There are some fun songs to sing like these:

Happy 100 Day
(to the tune of "Happy Birthday to You")
Happy 100 days to us,
Happy 100 days to us,
Happy 100 days at ________ School,
Happy 100 days to us.

100 Days
(to the tune of "10 Little Indians")
10, 20, 30 days of school,
40, 50, 60 days of school,
70, 80, 90 days of school,
100 days of school!

Realizing that we are 100 days into the year makes me want to go check out my new year resolutions...time is zooming by!  Have fun counting This Little Project!

The Counting Train Puzzle

We are starting to do more math experiences with Jay. One thing that bothers ME (not him) is that there is a certain number that gets skipped when he counts from 10 to 20. The lucky number 14. We are tackling that number with this project. If you have any desire to tackle any kind of counting (by 2's, 5's, 10's, etc.) this could be a fun project for you.

Supplies: cardboard (reuse a cereal box), markers, ruler, scissors, scrapbooking-type scissors.

This project is related to the ABC puzzle we made before, but this time I was focused on order. That puzzle focused on matching. Since order is the goal we made a train. Putting the train puzzle together means that all the train cars line up in the CORRECT order.

To make your Train Puzzle:
1-cut your cardboard into 2.5" strips.


2-measure .25" from each side and draw a line for the top and bottom of each train car.  I also pencilled in a line that I used to marker in the "link" from one train car to the next-see end photo.


3-mark how long you want each train car to be before you cut (this is to make sure that you end up with the right number of train cars for however you are practicing your counting.)


4-Using scrapbooking scissors (the kind with the fancy edges) cut each car out. Alternate the scissor patterns so that you use a DIFFERENT edged scissor on the front and back of each train car.


5- I wanted Jay to feel like this was HIS puzzle. So after I got the puzzle this far I let him take over. He colored each train car puzzle piece with a different color marker.

Then we wrote a number on each train car.

And here it is! Now we have a fun (and cheap) way to practice number order.

Have a Happy Counting Little Project!