Numbers and Letters Box

A few months ago we sorted out all Little Boos toys and placed them into categories. Sad, I know but this has really helped me with our day to day activities. I know if she wants to play at fancy dress that the box is ready and waiting we also have ones for sticker/colouring books, play food and dolly things .  I just wish that all my stuff was this organised! Anyway, I wanted to share with you what we have in the Numbers and Letters box.  This is used to inspire Little Boo with numbers, letters and colours.

In the box we have things that we have collected over time such as free toys from magazines.  These we use as a matching activity or to count.

Buttons can be used for a multitude of things counting, sorting the biggest from the smallest, sorting into colours, making patterns or counting out a set amount. More ideas are on The Activity Mom .

Pebbles these we have used to count and to place around letters. I am also going to paint/collage a few with Little Boo and place letters on them so she can spell out her name.

We have a leap frog fridge magnet alphabet set . Little Boo has had this since she was really Little in the old house we had it on our fridge and she used to play with it loads and often dance to the tune.  Unfortunately this seems out of stock at the moment but leap frog also do a Letter Factory which looks really good and the same sort of concept.

There is a large tub of colour animal counters which I got from the education show last year at a very good price.  These have been great to sort into colours and group or count them.  There is also a tub of play animals that Little Boo likes to match up and place in groups then count them.

There are some animal dominoes in the box which Little Boo is getting really good at playing. This is great to learn matching and also learning to take turns whilst playing games. The musical instruments are included as very often we play a beat then Little Boo tries to copy what I have just done.

The wooden fruits are a fantastic threading set that I brought from the education show a few years ago (again at a much cheaper price) when Little Boo was just learning to thread.  They are lovely to use and are made for younger children to practice threading we also use them to make patterns with now.

The bus is a laminated sheet from twinkle where we count the people onto the bus. I have printed some flash cards with different amounts of pennies on them as well from Twinkle.

The most important thing is to make it all FUN! and keep adding things to it as your child progresses. 

Play dough Sweet shop- Maths the fun way

A few days ago it was requested that we make another cake and sweet shop as we have done in the past. However, this time we made a few changes so it was a fun maths activity. I made up a new batch of play dough and decided on Strawberry, chocolate and vanilla.  I followed the no-cook recipe as I was trying to get it done quickly with as little mess as possible . Then we started to make our sweets and cakes. This in itself was a great activity as whilst we were making we were chatting  about what we were doing and our day.  I had been at work so it was a great way to relax and just enjoy some quality time together. 

Never throw away old chocolate containers they can be used as great moulds for play dough. 

Little Boo practicing with the cooking tweezers. 

I asked little Boo if she wanted to do a pick and mix! she was really excited about this. The idea behind this was so that we could count out the sweets as well as improve her fine motor skills as I had recently brought some utensils from Ikea which included some cooking tweezers these were great for the pick and mix. Which we placed into plastic cups.  

We set up the stall, Little Boo decided on how much everything was going to be. The scales were a great hit as she loved pretending to weigh the fudge. I put a mark on the scales where she needed to weigh too however, she just found it funny to keep on adding the fudge. Myself and her Dad were the customers who came into her shop and asked for items. To improve Little Boo's maths we were asking for specific amounts of sweets such as three orange ones. It was apparent whilst playing that it was a helpful game to play to learn colours as well. 

She used her till to add up the cost then wrote me and her Dad a receipt.  I just thought it was amazing how she had done the receipt like a list.  

It was obvious that Little Boo liked the activity as she asked to play the next day.  I had placed clingfilm over all the items so they were fine to play with again.  It was lovely as when I was at work she asked her Nanny to help her make some more sweets for the stall. They made a great job!