We’ve been pretty good about creating our own math games. However, at some point I felt like our creativity ran dry with the materials we already owned. There were some math pages in Carbon’s general preschool workbook, but we all agreed they were poorly designed and boring.
I have some stuff on hold from the library, but we became impatient waiting for it. This weekend we made a trip to the local teacher supply store, which is always a stressful mission when I’m letting Carbon go with me.
We found some cool stuff: a new math workbook, a set of spinners (that will make math games a lot easier to make), a set of dice with numerals instead of dots (ditto), and a pack of number matching cards with quantities of things and printed numerals. We also got one of those reusable card stock worksheets for telling time. You slip a plain piece of paper behind it and write in the holes, so the cardstock can be used again and again. According to the teacher store, telling time is a 2nd grade skill, but Carbon is very ready to read the clock and he picked that out himself.
Then we ended up getting two games that are loosely math related. We got a domino game and a game called Leapfrog. Leapfrog has a little trampoline, six frog beanbags, and six lily pads with the numbers 1-6 printed on them. There are many variations of play, and I have to admit that the trampoline adds an extra bit of fun to the process, because you throw the beanbag at the trampoline and it bounces off, hopefully, onto one of the lilly pads.
There’s no way to get out of the store without buying stickers, and he also selected a new pencil and a poster of the 7 Continents.
The damage was over $70! I can’t go there very often, or I’ll destroy my education budget. Luckily for me, I’m going to claim all of these as business expenses, since the daycare kids will use them also. My dh respects the argument: “but it’s tax deductible”.
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