I made a dump truck color sort for color recognition and review. I printed the patterns on cardstock paper ... cut them out and laminated them. There are twelve dump truck cards and six color squares for each card.
In this activity children put the colors squares on the mats with the same color dump trucks. Play continues until all of the colors have been sorted and matched. You can download the patterns below.
dump truck color sorting
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The free membership printable this week is Scarecrow Color Sort for color recognition and review. I printed the patterns on cardstock paper ... cut them out and laminated them.
I set the scarecrow cards and color squares out on the table. There are twelve scarecrow cards and six color squares for each card.
In this activity the children put the color squares on the scarecrow cards with the same color hats.
You can grab the patterns below for free until Sunday October 15th ... after that date they will only be available in the member's section which is also where I have added four ... six ... and eight piece scarecrow puzzles. scarecrow color sort 
scarecrow puzzles added to the member's section
I am always looking for extra ways to incorporate fine motor development into our activities and since Easter will be here soon we decorated playdough eggs. Because this activity uses small items remember to use close supervision with children under the age of three and those still in the stages of putting small items in their mouths.
The children rolled out the playdough and then cut egg shapes with a cookie cutter. I set out bowls of jewels that I had purchased from the craft store and the children were free to decorate the eggs any way they wished.
The children pressed the jewels into the playdough and tried to put as many on each egg that they could. While they could put any jewels on any way wanted I gave them a challenge of seeing if they could put different jewels on the eggs so that each egg did not have two of the same jewels on it which turned it into a sorting activity as well.
We have used water beads for a variety of activities and the children really enjoyed them. I recently found a source for jumbo water beads and decided to give them a try to see what they were like.
I purchased them from etsy but the same seller also sells on ebay. The water beads were around 7.00 dollars for a package of 24 but the seller included a few extra in case of damage during shipping.
The jumbo beads start out the same size and the finished size of the original water beads. Because they are small objects you will want to use very close supervision for children under five.
I put the beads in a bucket of room temperature water and made sure the beads always had enough water to cover them. The instructions that came with the beads were not the clearest as to the specific time frame it would take for the water beads to reach full size.
beads after one hour of soaking in water
After one hour of soaking the beads in water they developed the look and texture of raspberries. I was surprised how much they had grown in such a short time period.
beads after four hours of soaking in water
After fours hours in water the beads had grown larger and developed smooth ridges. The outer area of the beads started to become transparent while the center remained solid.
beads after twenty-four hours in water
After twenty-four hours the beads had grown very large but still had some dimples on them which indicated that there was still room for them to grow. The instructions stated the water beads could take 2-4 days to reach full size.
beads after forty-eight hours in water
After forty-eight hours the beads had reached their full size and and we did sorting of colors and sizes as well as counting activities. The children also free
played with them in the water which was for a sensory play activity. We observed the changes together and the children could pick the beads up while observing but I always made sure that I was there to supervise. After the beads reached there full-size they are pretty hard to break by just squeezing them. You can see a video of the jumbo water beads below: 
I went to Walmart today and found bags of shaped pasta that would be awesome for sorting and counting activities. They price was listed at 3.50 per bag but that may vary from store to store.
There were three different themes: - ocean - transportation - space Each bag contains three different colors of pasta in a variety of pasta shapes. 
ocean themed pasta
transportation themed pasta
space themed pasta
How fun are these? We are going to sort by shape (cars ... trains ... airplanes etc) and then we are going to sort by color. We will then count how many we have sorted.
Because the pasta is small remember to user supervision when working with children under the age of three and those still in the stages of putting items in their mouths. Let me know if you were able to find the shaped pasta and where. Also what activities you will be doing with them!! 
I put together a math and fine motor activity that uses pringles potato chip canisters and buttons. It is really easy to set up and I think it turned out super cute.
You will need to have an empty and clean pringles canister ... glue ... scissors ... an exacto knife ... and something to cover your can with. I made mine with scrapbook paper.
I measured the scrapbook paper to fit the length of the can and cut it to size using a paper cutter. I then applied glue to the back of the scrapbook paper.
The next step was to roll to carefully roll the paper around the canister making sure it was even. I then glue my "button drop" label on to the front of the can. You can find that label here.
I used an exacto knife to cut an opening on the cover of the canister. I made mine a slimmer opening so that the children would have to push the buttons more to get them to drop into the canister. You can make yours a bigger opening if you choose to.
In this activity children pick up the buttons and push them through the opening at the top of the canister. I used medium size buttons in a variety of colors because I wanted the children to also sort and count the buttons after they had finished dropping them in the can.
The children also used a dice with this activity for additional math practice. They rolled the dice and then put in the same number of buttons into the can. When all of buttons had been dropped into the can they took the lid off the can and emptied all of the buttons on to the table. The next step was to sort the buttons by color and then count them. You can see a video of this activity below: |
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