Learning About Math With Cookies

 Cookies, a delicious treat and also a great tool for learning math.  

We always start each day of our Mother Goose Time lessons with circle time.  Everyday the girls put up a calendar piece, which is a great way to practice counting and patterning.  Today I put different cookie shapes into a bag and the girls had to guess what they were without looking.  We also sang One Cookie, Two Cookies, which further helped enforce counting and numbers.

The girls made their own cookie plate art.  This was a good way to review shapes with Elli.  They had a lot of fun decorating the cookies and then using them to play bakery later on. 

The girls used the shape manipulatives from this months box to work on the provided shape design mats.  Elli worked with the simpler mat, just matching shapes and colors.  Addie was able to complete the harder shape map that required manipulating the shapes and spatial awareness.  

 The girls completed the star page in their my little journals.  They used sponges to decorate the page with pretend cookies.  There was tons of shape recognition and practice in today's lesson.

Elli did some work with the hands on letters.  She used yarn to recreate v and x.

While Addie was out at the movies Elli helped me make a few different types of Christmas cookies.  She worked on counting cookies and measuring ingredients.  Her favorite part was licking the bowls.

We had a book about counting cookies that went perfect with today's lesson.

We finished up the day with dance n' beats.  I cut out and numbered 9 cookies and put the corresponding number of chips on the back of each one. The girls worked together to put them in numerical order.  Elli worked on counting the chips and Addie worked on adding them together.  Then they danced along to the DVD.  The girls had so much fun with today's lesson, and there were so many opportunities to learn math.

Bells

The girls had so much fun with today's Mother Goose Time lesson about bells.

During circle time the girls tried to roll the provided jingle bells onto the hands on letter x's.  

They also tried ringing big and small bells and noting the difference in sound.  Elli worked on counting to 7, using the bells as counters.  Addie worked on separating the bells into groups of 7 and doing some basic addition.

We talked some more about how smaller bells sound higher.  Addie correctly predicted that a glass with a smaller amount of water in it would sound higher.  They had so much fun playing with the water bells, which was the suggested experiment for today.

The girls completed the x page in their my little journals.  Up until this month Elli has never tried tracing the letters.  Today I showed her how to trace the first line;  she worked hard trying to trace the rest by herself.

The girls made their own bells, which we hung on our Christmas tree.

We finished up with one of my favorite Christmas books.

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Owls and Winter Birds

Day 8 with Mother Goose Time was owls.  Elli worked on patterning with the provided cards.

She also worked on sorting this months manipulatives by shape on to the corresponding owl shaped cards.  

Elli loved making the owl puppet craft that went with today's lesson.  When Addie got home from school and saw it she asked to make one of her own. 

This week we also spent a day learning about winter birds.  During circle time I introduced the loving bees. Elli then worked on making a nest out of her blankets and pillows.  We put balloon eggs in the nest for her to check on throughout the day.  She loved playing in the nest.

Pretending to play the drum.

We played winter charades.  Elli and I took turns acting out the pictures on the provided cards.  

We talked about how birds use their feathers to stay warm, fly and even as camouflage.  Elli experimented with blowing feathers into the air and also throwing and catching them.  She used the feathers to make her own cardinal picture.

I hid a set of bird cards around Elli's room.  She ran around collecting them all and then worked on matching them with the second set.  She loved hunting for the birds.  

Pretending to be a sad bird.

We talked about what birds need to survive, and how some migrate in the winter.  Elli picked different basic needs cards and then we worked to solve the problem that was presented.  

I found a great book at the library to go with today's lesson.

We finished up the day with dance n' beats.  

An InLinkz Link-up