It was beautiful out today, so after of lots of playing and exploring in our own backyard, I gave Maddy and Owen the challenge of introducing our ole pals the Number Boxes to Mother Nature.
- Backyard Number Boxes: I brought out two pieces of colored cardstock with boxes numbered 1-8 on top and two rolls of Scotch tape.
I said to Maddy and Owen, All right friends, you’ve done this before, but you’ve never done it outside. I’m challenging you both to fill each of these Number Boxes with the correct number of things you can find here in our backyard. Like in this box (pointing to number 1), I might put one piece of grass in the middle and then stick it in the box with tape. Do you think you can do it?
Maddy literally grabbed her paper and tape and ran into the yard, and Owen seemed equally excited but stayed close to me on the porch. Maddy was happy working on her own, so occasionally I checked to see how she was doing, but I mostly hung out with Owen. He loved the hunting and counting parts but had trouble with the taping.
Yes, this is Owen’s partially finished one, and yes, that is a cat treat he put for Number 1, and no, (for those of you who know us) we don’t have a cat. We give our neighbor’s cats treats (with permission!), and Owen found one in the corner of our porch; because of allergies, we’ll never have a cat of our own. We need to lure them close enough to pet somehow. . .
So there is our little bit of learning for the day! Happy Spring Break!
What a great game, as soon as it dries up here, we’ll have to try it.
I’d love to link to this on my blog, but I couldn’t find an email address. May I use one of your images in my post? Thanks!
onecraftyplace(at)gmail(dot)com
Yikes! Thanks, Chrissy, for bringing that to my attention. . . I just added my email address (duh!) and feel free to add whatever you’d like to your site. I appreciate the love and can’t thank you enough for asking!
Cheers!
amy
This is a fantastic idea– I’ll have to recreate this with my almost 3 year old, perhaps only going up to 4 or 6 at first.
I’ve come over from the DC Metro Moms site (great post there, by the way!), and after reading around here for a while, I think that you might be interested in some things I have posted about a project my kids and I have been working on– http://mteblog.blogspot.com/search/label/bird%20study
Great blog- you’re officially getting added to my reader! 🙂 (I’m in MD, too– in PG County!)
Hi Amy we love this activity too and have added it to our upcoming post on the 13th with a picture, brief description, credit, and link. We hope this is permissible, please let us know if it is not, thanks!
My daughter loves flowers and being outside. I think she will be so excited to do this activity this week!! Thanks for sharing. 😉 Heather
what a lovely math idea. My dd is a bit too old, but I'm going to save this for my 1 year old in about 2 more years. Thanks for sharing!