I first bought snapcubes from My Playschool, together with some other math related learning materials when I was pregnant with my little boy. They have been used on and off, serving as counters sometimes and as we found out, they are also marvellous for teaching patterns (e.g. purple-purple-green-purple-purple-?). But since we bought 100 snap cubes, I was determined to make full use of them all and what better way to do so than teaching numbers 1-100?
My girl’s 4.5 years old and starting to count to 30 which isn’t by any standard fast. But since she did show some signs of wanting to read the time off the digital clock, I figured perhaps I might want to introduce numbers up to 100 gently using the snap cubes. I got down to buying some labelling stickers and wrote the numbers 1-100 and got her to paste them in sequence. Meanwhile, I was just being cheeky pasting random numbers everywhere to spice things up:
We survived pasting to 100 as she took her task of labelling the snapcubes very seriously:
And so I successfully got her to count with me to 100 in sequence. We took quite long to finish this process – if your child gets tired of the activity, just re-visit this next time.
On another occasion, when we took out these snapcubes for revision, we figured that it was easy to learn to count in 10s:
I got her to re-assemble the cubes and she was very motivated to put everything back in sequence:
Subsequently, we focused on counting from 1-30 and since we had to find a new way to combine the snapcubes, writing more numbers on the labels was necessary so that the numbers would show up correctly and this time she wanted to have a go at it:
She has been more motivated to count (she’s not very interested in Math) so that says something about this activity. I guess fixing and dismantling these snap cubes keep her interested and need I say this is a great activity for practising those fine motor skills! If you do have a set of snapcubes, do consider trying this out! π
~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you enjoyed this post, please share your thoughts in the comments or share the post with your friends by clicking on the social media buttons below. Do hop over to my Facebook page where I connect with my readers and I would love to have you following me on Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram too π
Hey, we just bought these! And I know what I’m doing next with my 4.5 year old. π Thanks for the great idea!
no problem! Have fun!
What a great learning activity!
Thanks for linking up to TGIF! Hope to see you again tomorrow,
Beth
I’m also embarking on Math journey with Poppy! Thankfully it’s not as scary as I thought it would be π
Adora @ Gingerbreadmum recently posted…Philips AVENT Launches New Natural Bottles and Comfort Breast Pumps
Simple, fun and educational, what more can you ask for? Nothing π
I like the posts so much I featured it on our “The Kid’s Co-op” post!
(The link: http://glitteringmuffins.com/2013/03/07/kids-co-op-44/)
Valerie @ Glittering Muffins recently posted…Kids on the Go – Cabane a sucre Constantin, St-Eustache, Quebec, Canada