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learning activity

math

Learn a simple way to understand drawing in perspective by writing your name in 3D! What's going on? You've just used a common artistic technique, called "one point perspective," to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional piece of paper. By drawing lines from your original letters back to the perspective point, you're setting up boundaries that show how much smaller your block letters would look if you slid them into the distance. Connecting the lines between your original and distant block letters makes it look like the letters are taking up 3D space. This technique can be used to draw even more complicated 3D objects and scenes - experiment with it and see what happens! You can also use a second perspective point, or shadows, to add even more depth to your drawings.Want to explore more hands-on crafts without the hassle of gathering materials? Learn about chemistry and design out-of-this-world bath bombs with <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/us/store/dp/planet-bath-bombs/3702" target="_self">Planet Bath Bombs</a> from the <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/store" target="_self">KiwiCo Store</a>!

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Draw your name in block letters in pencil. Then, trace each of the letters in marker. 

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Make a small mark in pencil anywhere on your paper. This mark will be the vanishing point of your perspective drawing. 
 
What is a vanishing point?
A vanishing point is the point where all parallel lines in a perspective drawing intersect. 

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Draw a line in pencil connecting every point of every letter to the vanishing point. Make sure these lines are light as you will erase them when you have finished your drawing. 

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Trace these lines with marker any distance. Keep in mind that these lines will dictate how long your letters are. 

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When you have finished, connect each of these lines with a horizontal or vertical line. Notice that these lines run parallel to the original letter you drew.&nbsp;

Some letters, like B and Y, have lines where it doesn't make sense to draw horizontal lines. In these instances, draw a line that is parallel to the line in the original letter you drew.

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Erase the pencil lines and then color in your name! If you want more of a challenge, try making your name into a cityscape. 

pencil

Ruler

markers (colored)

eraser

3D Name Drawing

math games

indoor game

game

We have started exploring math concepts with hands on materials at my house. The latest concept is greater than and less than.  We started our math lesson by creating an egg carton alligator puppet and ended up learning about the greater than and less then symbol.

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We started  by painting the bottoms of two egg cartons white and the tops of two egg cartons green. 

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When the paint had dried, we used a hole punch to place a row of five holes along the sides of the white egg cartons and green egg cartons.  

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We cut of one row off the end of  each of the white sections. It made it easier to fit the while sections into the green ones, One row  of the cut off rows was saved  to use for the gator's eyes. Each white section of the carton was  then placed into the green section. 

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The green yarn was then woven down through first hole in the back of the green carton and through the white carton. We wove the yarn in and out of the carton until reached the end of that side. The yarn was then passed though the hole on the front of the other side of the carton. My son then finished stitching the second side of the green carton to the white carton. When he had reached the end of the carton. I tied of the end of the yarn.

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The final step in creating the gator puppet was to color black eyeball on this eyes with a marker and attach them to the top of one of the green cartons.

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Colored dots were then placed on large piece of white paper.  We put dots on, but you could use any sticker and any amount of stickers in your two groups as long as they aren't the same.

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We put the paper up a stand, but you could keep yours on the floor. JDaniel held the puppet's mouth areas opened and closed and I told me about  talked about how to hold the gator's mouth to show that he doesn't like to eat less than he has too when their are a small number of dots.

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The gator holds his mouth open to gobble up the largest number available.  We had a lot of fun opening and closing the gators moth.

paint

paintbrushes

marker

yarn

hole punch

egg carton

glue

stickers

construction paper

Alligator Puppet: Less Than, Greater Than

This counting jar game for kids is a super fun hands-on way to count to 100 and practice the mathematical skill of estimation. You can count by 1's, 5's and 10's while filling up a collection of jars. Pull out these fun math manipulatives any time to reinforce learning.

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In addition to some mason jars we already had on hand, we saved other jars for a few weeks (peanut butter jars, applesauce jars, pickle jars, etc.).

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Next, my daughter and I looked around the house for things we thought we had at least 100 of. This was great practice for estimating. We chose wooden craft sticks, legos, rubber bands, little wooden craft blocks, pasta noodles, Unifix cubes, coins, crayons and small Lincoln logs.

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Then we began counting and filling jars. Again, she had to use her estimation skills to choose a jar she thought would hold 100 of the items she was counting.

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I was prepared to spread this activity over several days but she was really excited about it and filled all the jars in one day.

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With our wooden craft sticks, I had her divide them into piles of ten, then count by ten to 100 before placing them in the jar.

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She had to choose a jar that was not only wide enough but tall enough for the sticks.

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She discovered that we did not have a jar large enough for our larger Lincoln log pieces, but the small ones fit just fine.

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With all of our jars filled, it was time to find a place to hold our collection.

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We chose a shelf in our play room and I asked her to line them up from largest to smallest.

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Below our shelf is our white board, so I handed her our box of magnetic letters and helped her spell out "We can count to 100!"

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We love the way our jar counting game turned out. And we plan to use it for more practice counting by 1's, 5's and 10's.

jars

Anything you have 100 of

Counting Jar Game for Kids

learning game

Learn colors, practice sorting, and do a little bit of counting with this simple and fun springtime activity.

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We started out our activity by gathering some colored paper, a variety of different colored pom poms and an empty muffin tin. I cut some circles out of each color of paper then filled each section of the muffin tin with a different colored circle. 

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Next I mixed up all the pom poms. My 3-year-old began sorting them, by placing each color pom pom in the section of the muffin tin that had the matching color. 

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She really enjoyed this, and was so proud of all her sorted pom poms! After we sorted colors for a while we wanted to try some counting.

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I took all the circles out of the muffin tin and drew a different number of Easter eggs on each one. I then placed them back in the muffin tin face up. (Leave the backside of the circles blank so you can flip the circles over and do the color sorting activity again.)

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My daughter had fun counting the Easter eggs, then finding the  correct color and number of pom poms to place in each section of the muffin tin. 

pom-poms

muffin tin

colored paper

scissors

Circle paper punch

Spring Color Sorting and Counting Activity

This was a great activity to keep little hands busy!  My two-year-old loves to count and is constantly counting everything in sight.  We are working on matching numbers and objects so this was the perfect activity for him.  It also worked on those fine motor skills and kept his older siblings busy at the same time.  I love an activity that everyone can enjoy!

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Gather all your materials.  We used a bag of multicolored beads from a craft kit and the kids loved that they came in all different shapes and sizes.  The large beads were great for the younger kids!

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We counted out ten pipe cleaners and wrapped a small piece of tape on one end of each pipe cleaner to create a flag.  This helped to keep the kids from pulling their beads all the way off the pipe cleaner.

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Then, we wrote a number from 1-10 on the masking tape.  We chose to use smaller numbers since I was focusing on counting with my two- and three-year-olds.  

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The kids each got a few pipe cleaners and had fun stringing the correct number of beads on each pipe cleaner.  They got lots of fine motor practice and counting practice.  My two-year-old is very into counting right now so this was the perfect activity for him!  (Be sure you watch young kids with the beads, though.  Only you know whether your child is ready to work with small beads yet.)

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Once all the beads were strung we put them in order from smallest to largest.  The kids got confused because, since we used different-sized beads, the longest strands didn't always have the most beads.  This was a great chance for us to work on reasoning skills and recount some of our strands.  My 4-year-old especially benefited from this.

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We also pulled out a white board and marker and used our bead strings to do some simple addition problems.  After our math lesson, the kids had a great time stringing and emptying their pipe cleaners.  They made patterns and rainbows while I finished making dinner!

pipe cleaners

beads

masking tape

markers

whiteboard and marker

Number Bead Stringing

Looking for a way to beat the heat or have fun indoors? This balloon game is a colorful solution. Ages two to ten will all love this game! 

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Blow up 10 balloons and number them 1 to 10 with a permanent marker. Hide the balloons around the house. (One of the kids can do this step, too.) Have your kids work as a team to find the balloons in order. If they find the 9, they can't get it out of its spot until they have found 1-8. 

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My son loved playing this game with his big sisters. After finding all of the balloon, he enjoyed counting all 10 and identifying the numbers. It was wonderful watching the kids work together to accomplish a group goal. Hiding the balloons upstairs and downstairs worked out well because it got the kids moving. My ten-year-old said, "At first I thought this game was going to be boring, but it was actually a lot of fun." High praise indeed!  

balloons

permanent markers (e.g., sharpies)

Numbered Balloon Hide and Go Seek

I'm always on the look out for fun new ways to practice math.  These fit the bill perfectly because they're so adaptable to more than just math.

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Peel the stickers off your backing sheet and stick them onto your cubes.  With the size of our stickers we fit one sticker per side, but that worked well for one of my planned projects with these.

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Some things to be aware of when choosing stickers for this project.  Measure your sticker against your cube.  The penguins we chose were almost too big for the cube, and some had to be trimmed.

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While the puffy stickers were easier to pull off for my son, they had the problem of being bumpy and not resting well.  In hindsight I should have just found some normal kid Christmas stickers, not scrapbooking ones.

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When all of your cubes have stickers on them take a final look around to make sure they have all sides covered.

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Now gather up as many of the cubes as will fit in your hand and roll those cubes!

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Figure out your math problem and write it down.  I was intrigued to see how my son grouped the cubes.  It was fun to listen to his reasoning.

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My other planned activities with these: story telling (roll the cubes and tell a story with them), graphing (roll a die and record the results), and probability (which sticker is most likely to turn up after 10 rolls).  There are a lot of fun ideas you can do with this.

wooden blocks

Math Counters

animals

What do starfish and pom-poms have in common? The two can be combined to create a fun, beach-themed math game.I cut out two starfish drawings and added ten circles to each to create a fun counting game. Starfish have circular bumps on their arms--which, as it turns out, are a perfect place to put pom-poms!

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Create a game board by drawing starfish (with suckers!) and cutting out the shapes. After getting your supplies together, decide who'll be first to roll the die. 

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Whatever number you roll, place that same number of pom-poms on your starfish game piece. 

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The first person to complete his or her (star) board wins! 

Starfish Counting Game

physics

printable

In this project, you’ll make your own bell curve by randomly dropping beads onto a special board. Get ready to visualize some statistics!&nbsp;Download the printable&nbsp;<a href="http://images.kiwicrate.com/diy_ad/KiwiCo-Mesmerizing-Mathematics.pdf">here</a>.

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Glue the printable to one side of the corkboard. Then, trim the paper to the corkboard. 

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Push a pin into every dot. You may need a grown-up to assist you. 

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Glue a popsicle stick on top of every line, using beads to help evenly space the popsicle sticks. Let them dry for at least ½ hour.  

31 at-home math projects for kids

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