Number week

Sometimes I like to focus our activities around a theme. We have had colour days where we use one colour in as many ways as possible - green paint, playdough, duplo blocks etc. This week I decided to up this idea and have a week completely focused on the number 1-10. It has been lots of fun so far and we're only half way through. And the bonus of this is that my 17 month old is wandering around saying 'two, two' and my 3 year old is learning to recognise all the numbers both in quantities and in figures, and counting 1-10 and 10-1. For me it makes the activities even more interesting as i'm consciously thinking of ways to adapt our routine to include numbers!

So here's how we've been doing it.

On Monday I saw a blog which had number monsters and thought they looked great so we set off to make them. The boys had a great time sticking bits on the monsters and then posting numbers through as I counted. We have progressed to putting odd numbers written on one colour and even numbers on another but there are so many variations we will be able to play with them for a long time.

We had some sponge letters and numbers so our painting this week has involved the number one and seeing if they can identify which number they are using. 

Our baking has incorporated number bread which we formed ourselves. The boys rolled out long sausage shapes and I showed them how to make them into numbers. They were both really happy to able to make number 1 themselves and the eldest did try a few others by folding his sausage shape. Next we moved on to number cookies. I have cake cutter numbers which are a great size to make the little cookies (as they want to eat one of each number). When they were ready I got the eldest to match the cookies with the written number and we counted them. He loved that he could then eat all of them and has asked to repeat this activity again and again (I'm looking into what I can substitute to make this a slightly healthier game). The final number activity we did with food was to cut out the numbers from ham and cheese. In the end they had a plate full of bread ham and cheese numbers and we used sweetcorn and carrot stick to put under each number. The whole lunch was number madness finished off with the cookies!

We have also looked at dice (both with dots and numbers up to 12) playing simple games of how many steps they can take to reach a finish line by throwing the dice. I had some math counters so the eldest enjoyed looking at these and learning about one's, ten's and hundred's although this is just to get him familiar with the material and vocabulary as the concept is much more advanced. He enjoyed building mini towers with them and we did some counting and placing them next to numbers.

I also made some number rods. these are a material used by the Montessori method. Mine were very simply made of cardboard and paint but as a first contact they worked out ok and my son was excited to get the longest ones and leave me the shortest ones. Again he counted the colours and discussed the length so lots of mathematical language happening. There is a tutorial on how to use number rods here.

Overall it's been so much fun and the boys have enjoyed all the activities. My 3 year old even managed to write some numbers using lines for 1's and o for 0's. He was really into doing this and spent a while using different coloured paper and pencils. 

At no point am I forcing them to learn just letting it happen through fun games and activities. Even if they don't learn much it's been a great week and one we are sure to repeat :)