preschool: counting train

so you know tesla loves to play alphabet train.  (and that he is smitten with trains in general.)

every single day, without fail, he asks to play alphabet train as soon as we put desmond to bed.

the alphabet train has been really helpful in cementing the capital vs. lowercase concept for tesla.  i hadn't really introduced the vocabulary before because i didn't want to confuse him, but now he can easily identify the capital and lowercase forms of each letter.

however, i was getting bored of playing alphabet train every day.   :)  so i decided to expand the concept.  tesla's pretty solid on his letters, but numbers are still a bit shaky.

enter the counting train!

 available in the homely thanksgiving-themed colors of brown, cream, and orange!

(we ran out of construction paper)

i  made cards with the numbers 1-20 (although we usually just use the 1-10 set, since recognizing the written numerals is a relatively new thing around here and the 11-20s just confuse him).  we practice counting and numeral recognition as we add each "car" to the train.

and still, the simple fact that i told him it's a train makes this game enthralling.

toddlers.  so easy to please.

i plan to continue the train game, adding a sight words set and possibly a set for rare color names.

let me know if you have any ideas for categories!

i can do it myself

so today during naptime i was scanning blogs and my pinterest board for preschool activity ideas.  nothing was really jumping out at me, so i decided i would actually try to come up with something on my own.

and do you know what?

it can be done!

(shocker)

i was inspired by this book (it's one of my favorites and the boys adore it):

here's what we did.

i cut a piece of construction paper in half (one for t and one for d) and glued on their respective pictures and names.  then i cut out 2 sets of 10 apples and labeled them with the numbers 1-10.  (obviously if you had apple stickers you could save yourself the cutting and the gluing.)

i showed the boys the book and their pictures and told them that we'd be reading Ten Apples Up on Top and that they would get to put apples up on top of their pictures, too.

so i read the story aloud, and each time an apple was added, we stopped and glued another apple "up on top".   (and of course, counted all of the apples...)

overall, this was a little bit of a stretch for desmond's attention span--plus he kept ripping his apples off--but it was a great activity for tesla's age. (2 1/2 +)  i thought it was fun and kind of a cute idea, and i was proud of myself for coming up with it (as complex and brilliant as it was).  ;)

behold, apples up on top:

we also did a pouring activity

and another, extremely messy activity that you will hear about tomorrow.


have a happy week!  i hope it's starting to cool off, wherever you are.  (unfortunately, we've still got at least 3 1/2 months of summer left.)