Flower Garden Math

This flower garden math activity introduces preschoolers to geometric concepts through art and play.

Materials

• foam cut in flower shapes or two dimensional flower stickers
• flat blocks, craft sticks, or foam cut in rectangular strips
• contact paper taped to easel, window, or wall sticky side facing out

Flower Garden Math Activity

1. Prepare materials.
2. Place materials out for play.
3. Suggest that we are going to make a flower garden with planter beds.
4. Depending on your teaching method,  allow the child to explore materials on own or you can model how to create a flower garden.
5. All the materials can stick onto the contact paper.  Thank you to Mama Smiles for showing how to use blocks on contact paper.  
6. Planter beds for the flowers are built out of the blocks or sticks, and flowers are planted inside the boxes.  
7. Flowers can be placed first and planter beds can be built around the flowers.  
8. Or child can create his own unique masterpiece.

Math Discussion Ideas

• How many flowers fit inside this planter? (Area and Counting)
• Do more small or large flowers fit inside this planter?  (Area)
• How many sticks are used to make this garden bed? (Perimeter)
• How can we make this bed larger to make room for more flowers? (Geometry, Problem Solving)
• Show me the smallest and largest planter beds your can make? How many flowers fit in those? (Geometry, Problem Solving)
• Which bed has the most/least flowers?  How can it fit so many flowers? (Comparison, Counting, Geometry)

Another fun idea would be to do this same activity but create a vegetable garden.  Make sure to allow your child time to explore and play with the materials on his own terms, too.

Other Math Activities from The Golden Gleam

• Ideas for Using Egg Cartons as a Math Tool
• Graphing and Number Lines with Colors
• Geometry with Hearts
• Creating Art with Shapes 

Watercolor Butterfly Craft

It's Spring! The flowers are blooming, and our shrubs in the front yard are awash in butterflies.



Between the beauty of the our front yard guests and the caterpillar study in Miss E's classroom, my daughter is giddy over butterflies.  She usually chooses to play school during our mommy-daughter playtime, but today she chose to play butterflies and caterpillars.  I got to practice my army crawl and munch leaves playing the caterpillar role, and Miss E swirled and raced around the room flapping her arms as a magnificent butterfly.

To carry on with our butterfly fun, we made a butterfly craft.

Egg Carton Math - Tinkerlab Creative Challenge

We are participating in Tinkerlab's Creative Challenge along with many other fabulous bloggers.  She challenged us to get creative with egg cartons with our children.  Miss E and I used our egg cartons to creatively explore math concepts.

Papa Plays - Coin Sorting

Miss E and her Papa love to play together.  Usually they are playing with her toy animals, but Papa creates other fun experiences for her too.  This past week they decided to dump out the coins in her piggy banks because they plan on depositing them in a bank account for her.

Color Math

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We made baked cotton balls for our Color Obstacle Course, and I decided to use them as manipulatives for math play to tie into our Color Theme.  You don't need baked cotton balls to do these activities.  Any collection of items with different colors could work as a math manipulative such as Legos, toy cars, crayons, or bracelets.

I made a masking tape graph inspired by Our Feminist Playschool.  Miss E sorted the cottons balls by their color into the graph.

A Flower Color Wheel- Color Theme

Spring seems to be arriving early, and the warm weather is bringing us the year's first blossoms.  Miss E and I explored the neighborhood hunting for flowers.  She carried her camera, and took a picture of every flowering plant along our walk.  Here are couple of her many photos.




Since Miss E has been a toddler, it is common for us to talk about the colors of flowers when we are admiring them, and I decided to use her interest in flowers to learn more about colors.  We made a flower color wheel using her photos.  Depending on your child's development level, he may help with some or all of the project.  I guided my 4 1/2 year old daughter and discussed ideas with her, but the completed project is mostly her work.

Materials
Photos of flowers - We used the photos taken by Miss E. If you can't print out photos, you can cut pictures from a magazine.
Scissors
Large sheet of paper
Glue
Pastels for coloring - You can use crayons or markers, but they won't mix well like the pastels.

Directions
-Create a color wheel on a circular piece of paper or a paper plate.  Your child will color in the 3 primary colors (red, blue, yellow)first.  Explain how mixing two primary colors makes a secondary color.  Using the pastels, your child will mix two primary colors together to create green, purple, and orange.



-Cut out the triangular color shapes on color wheel and arrange in circular pattern on a poster board or large sheet of paper.  Glue colors on paper.  Leave space in the middle for white because white is not often found on basic color wheels, but we found a lot of white flowers.
-Cut out pictures of flowers.

-Sort pictures by color of flower.  At this point, there may be a lot of discussion about colors because not all flowers are easily identified by a pure primary or secondary color.  Allow child to arrange flower pictures however she chooses next to the color wheel shapes.  -Once pictures are organized, glue the pictures onto the paper.  

Once your child has completed the flower color wheel, discuss which colors were more prominent and which colors were more rare.  Your child can count how many flowers of each color she found.  When my daughter realized there were no green flowers, she added some pictures of leaves to the color wheel.  We wondered together why there were no orange flowers.  
This activity covers the subject of art by learning about color theory by creating a color wheel and sorting flowers by color.  Mathematics is supported by sorting, counting, and comparing.  Children learn more about science by observing the natural world around them and describing it.  
This post is shared on the Kids Co-Op Linky Party.

Heart Math - Love Theme

We used chestnuts from our Winter Nature Table to explore concepts of measurement.  Non standard units of measurement can be used to develop children's measuring skills as long as each object is about the same size.  If you don't have chestnuts, you could use items like pennies, same size buttons, almonds, or uncooked pasta.  
From construction paper, I cut out three different size hearts and gathered three different size measuring cups.  
She learned about volume by filling each of the three cups with chestnuts, and she compared their different sizes by counting how many chestnuts filled each cup.


She measured each heart's area by placing chestnuts on top of the heart and counting how many chestnuts it took to cover it.  
She discovered each heart's perimeter by placing chestnuts around the edge of the heart and counting how many chestnuts it took to surround it.  


We talk about our favorite thing each night before bed, and Miss E said that playing with the chestnuts and hearts was her favorite part of the day.  Isn't it great that we can make math playful for kids and teach them at the same time?!

Autumn Nature Table

Miss E and her Papa have developed a Sunday morning tradition of going on a bike ride where they collect natural artifacts.  After a month of this, we have amassed quite a collection, and I wanted a place to display it all.  I'm impressed by the natural collections used for indoor play at preschools , and I hoped to create something similar on a smaller scale for our daughter.

Since this season has brought us a lot of berries, nuts, and seed pods, I chose these items for our display.  To keep it contained, a beautiful tray found at Goodwill would be perfect to hold it.  Small bowls and lids are used to hold the different materials.  Miss E decided where to place each material.

Once placed on the coffee table, it was ready for play.



She has investigated each of the materials on the tray.  So far, her favorite activity has been taking apart the seed pods and shells.  The fluffy seeds fascinated her.


She has rearranged the materials.  When she first decided to place these shells into a lid, I almost stopped her to inform her they wouldn't fit.  She proved me wrong by beautifully stacking them to contain them in the lid.  I am glad I let her figure out her own way because Mommy doesn't always know best.



We have had the tray out for only a few days, but she has spent time each day working with the materials.  One day she decided to plant the seeds, nuts, and berries, and we did that.  Another day I set out a egg carton tray, and she explored the materials sometimes working on counting.  
Over time, I plan to include more materials to encourage art, science, math, and literacy play with her nature tray.  The elements of the tray will change according to her interests and seasons.  Having the materials on a tray is helpful when we have itty bitty friends over to play because we can easily remove the tray out of reach since some of the materials can be poisonous or a choking hazard if eaten.  Although, I have always allowed Miss E to explore nuts and berries as long as I am watching her carefully, but each parent has to use her own best judgment.

Playing with Candy

We firmly favor chocolate over any other type of candy in our house.  There could never be enough chocolate, but we have too much of the other candy after trick or treating.  We created a candy wreath with some of the excess candy, but we still had quite a bit left.  I decided to let Miss E explore the other candy, and I opened all the packages, and dumped them in a bowl.  It was one of those activities I came up with when she was making it difficult for me to finish cooking dinner.

Materials for Candy Play

• Assorted hard candy (If child is still in baby or toddler phase, be present while playing to prevent choking.)
• Bowls of varying sizes
• Different types of kitchen utensils of different sizes - We used spoons, measuring spoons, ladles, and tongs.
• Tweezers
• Small toys - We didn't use them, but they would add a fun addition.

Ela has been playing with the candy for three days. 

She picks them up with tongs.

She pours the candy into different bowls.




She transfers them from spoon to spoon.

From November 3, 2011

The Little Miss rolls and spins a candy around in a bowl.




She shook the candy creating noise.



This activity supports fine motor skills by using kitchen tools to move around the candy.  It develops mathematical skills by creating experience with the concept of volume.  It benefits science skills by allowing children to observe the motion of the candy.
I know there are many of you who have been thinking, "My child would just eat it all."  I do have a confession.  Miss E is like any other child.  She sniffed and savored the sweet smell...

...until she could no longer resist temptation and took a lick which led to many stealthily eaten pieces of candy.  So I allow her to have a few pieces, and if she wants to continue playing with the candy she needs to stop eating it when I tell her she has eaten enough candy.  It looks like she likes playing with it because she stops eating the candy to keep having fun.  

Mandalas

Mandala and rangoli are patterned designs that are traditionally used during the celebration of Diwali, a Hindu holiday. They can be created outside a home or temple drawn with chalk and made using natural elements or sand.

The Crayola Website has rangoli and mandala coloring pages. My daughter has enjoyed coloring them. I have enjoyed the beauty of mandalas made with colorful natural elements such as flower petals, and I wanted to try creating one with my daughter. First, I tried to make one with clear contact paper, but my drawing skills are lacking, and most of the objects wouldn't adhere to the contact paper.

I decided to use the mandala on the Crayola website as a base. I suggest copying the designs onto card stock or other thick paper.  Miss E and I chose colorful food from her Indian grandmother's pantry - lentils and fennel. Lentils and grains come in various colors and create a beautiful effect when used in artwork. In addition, we gathered pink flower petals.








We found some of the shapes too small to work with, so I created bigger shapes with glue using the same basic design of the coloring page.  We covered one area at a time with different items and mirrored colors on each side of the design to create a pattern.














Miss E enjoyed creating her first mandala and wanted to continue working.  Here are her finished mandalas.
















Creating mandalas is a wonderful way to teach your children about another culture using art.  This activity supports fine motor skills and math concepts such as patterns and shapes.  Miss E enjoyed the sensory experience by touching, mixing, and smelling the materials.

Funny Face with Shapes

Fairy Dust Teaching had a creative art idea using cutting and tracing circle shapes to create pieces of artwork inspired by the artist, Wassily Kadinsky.  I wanted to try this with my daughter because she is working on her cutting and tracing skills.

I made three different sizes of circle stencils with lightweight cardboard.  Miss E traced and cut them.  Circles are a challenging shape to cut, and she requested I help.  I instructed her to layer the circles on top of each other, so she could see all the circles, and she could glue them anywhere on the piece of paper.  This is what was produced with the circles.






This looked like a clown face more than fine art, and I asked Miss E what her picture looked like.  Without hesitation, she said it looked like eyes and a nose.  I asked her if she would like to add other facial features to her picture.  She was excited to add to it, but I knew she was growing tired of the all the work it took to cut and trace, so we saved it for another day.  
Over the next few days, we added ears, mouth and a hat.  The Little Miss decided which shapes would represent each body part.  I made stencils for her to trace with three different sizes for each shape.  She traced all on her own and cut almost everything with just a bit of help from me.  




She arranged the shapes on the face.  





Miss E looks like she is happy with her funny face.  




In addition to supporting fine motor skills such as cutting, tracing and glueing, this project is great at fostering mathematical concepts such shapes, area, size, and comparing. It also allows children to see that shapes can be used to create.

Simple Math - Hide and Seek

As with most children, one of my daughter's favorite pastimes is hide and seek and she especially likes to play it hiding her stuffed animals. I wrote about playing hide and seek using the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See, and this time I decided to incorporate math into our usual game.

To make it simpler for her to process the concepts, we used only five animals and the foam numbers (1-5) from our outdoor hopscotch set. You can write out the numbers on sheets of paper as well if you don't have a number set.

Miss E placed the animals in a line, and she ordered the numbers placing one number next to each animal.




I hid the animals, and she closed her eyes and counted while she waited. As she found each animal she placed them next to the numbers. The statements and questions below are examples of how I encouraged mathematical thinking. She used the number line we created to help her answer the questions.

-How many animals have you found?




-How many animals do you have left to find?




-You have found two animals, and now you found one more. How many animals do you have now?
-What number animal do you need to find next?
-When we had found all the animals, I asked her how many animals we had left to support the concept of zero.




-To encourage concepts of ordinal numbers, I encouraged her to find the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th animal.
-Once she had found the animals, I inquired about what was the first and last animals she found.

We continued to take turns hiding all the animals, and the addition of numbers to the game only heightened her interest in playing. Incorporating numbers into hide and seek fosters learning through play by using mathematical concepts such as numbers, number line, ordinal numbers, addition, and subtraction.

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Location:At Home

Simple Math - Playing Airplane

Miss E enjoys playing airplane. When we play this together, we pretend we are both Mommies, and we take our children and luggage onto our plane. We spend time hanging out on the plane fastening our seat belts, eating snacks, and reading books until we reach our destination which is either New York, where her grandparents live, or the Savannah, where she hopes someday she will travel to see lions, elephants, and zebras. Today I decided to include additional elements to our airplane play. We added a game of maching socks to pack our luggage, making tickets, and creating a runway.

Before our journey, we need to pack our luggage which includes matching socks. This fosters mathematical skills such as same and different.








We created tickets to board the plane using strips of paper, stamps, and markers.








We made a plane out of pillows.




I assigned seat numbers using letter and number blocks. We found our seats using our seat assignment on our tickets. Matching rows and columns was a difficult concept for her as an almost 4 year old, but it is a skill we haven't explored yet. I showed her how I find my seats using the numbers and letters found on my ticket and assisted her when she had difficulty.




Up, up, and away - the plane takes off on the runway.




We hang out with our babies (aka stuffed animals) on the airplane until it lands. Good thing the flight attendants weren't strict about staying in our assigned seats.








Incorporating educational concepts into an imaginative play scene grabs their interest. Children will realize that math is something useful in their everyday lives. Using airplane seat numbers encourages a child to develop a concept of grids, coordinates, matching numbers, and counting. If the children make tickets with the same seat numbers, they can work on their problem solving skills to figure out how to assign a different seat numbers.

Assisting children in including additional features to their imaginative play scenes will model for them how to create more dimension to their play. I think this is especially important for children who don't frequently play with older children because older children will naturally be more creative in their play, but a parent needs to try to do this in the absence of an older playmate.




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Location:At Home