Distinguishing Between Number, Letter, and Word

This is a literacy activity we did to see if the students could distinguish a number from a letter and a letter from a word. Surprisingly, both classes did really well with it. I mostly had the older children participate. This is super easy to prepare and great for practice with beginning reading skills. 

Thinky Linky Thursday

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Last week's most clicked links were:

Mighty Math Powers with Flowers

from Teaching Munchkins

The Grouchy Ladybug

from Teaching My Blessings

Thanks for linking up and here is a button for those who were featured:

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Quantifying and Number Stamps

quan·ti·fy [verb] to determine, indicate, or express the quantity of.

Good old quantifying, one of our friendly math objectives. How do we teach this to preschoolers? Well, we started out with having the children put a button on each flower (to go along with our plant study). As they put each one on, they counted it. So, not only are they counting, but they are counting objects (1:1 correspondence), quantifying (indicating the quantity), and representing the amount with a number symbol. And they just thought they were playing a game!

We had more of these cards all the way up to the number 20.

Then to reinforce the number symbols, we had the children use number sponges and paint to make prints on their paper. We asked them to identify the numbers as they were stamping. Here are some photos of what we did.

 

The kids had lots of fun with this and made a much smaller mess than I had anticipated! 

Here are some books about numbers and counting (and one about comparing sizes: The Best Bug Parade) that might also be helpful.

Happy quantifying!

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Wishlist Wednesday: Swamp Frog First Graders

This week's guest blogger is from Swamp Frog First Graders. Please "hop" on by her lovely blog to see wonderful learning ideas, educational discussion and lots of awesome freebies for you to print and use with your class!

Hello Everyone!

I'm Heidi from "Swamp Frog First Graders" blog.

 I'm so excited to be a guest blog posting for Wishlist Wednesday on Cachey Mama's Classroom today!

I enjoy creating math games for adding, subtracting, and more with things my son used to love to play with as a young child....(and so we bought a ton of them)

 and now he's grown and I NEED to find a use for them!

My kiddos LOVE putting together Mr. Potato Head 

even when they have to do math to do it :)

I found patterns for Mr. Potato Head at "play2learnprintables.com"

It's a great pdf pattern for a simple game of rolling the die, counting the pips, and adding the body parts to the potato head :)  I ran them in color on cardstock and laminated them before I cut them out.  

I also have a box of Mr. Potato Head game pieces that some of my firstie friends get to play the Roll a Mr. Potato Head game with .... luck of the draw or best behavior...hmmm.  

I've added a twist for my firsties by having them use two 10-sided dice.  I had to manipulate the code sheet to include all the number combinations, but it seems to work.  I added things like: roll a 14, loose a turn.  Roll a 18, get an extra roll.  Roll a 1 or a 6, choose an arm.  Roll a 2 or a 17, choose a mouth.  

I also have a code card for using two 6-sided dice. 

 Same idea....just adding two numbers for each body part from the Mr. Potato Head printable.

I don't remember who came up with the recording sheet that my firsties write out their number sentences on.  I'm sure it was one of my wonderful team mates 

or maybe...a crafty teachers from

 the "First Grade Teachers in TN" blog....but it's not a necessity.  

You could always have them record their rolls on a dry erase board.

If you want the sheet, you can download it HERE.

Hope you enjoy Mr. Potato Head!

Hop on over to the swamp if you get a chance!  

I'd love to share some more ideas with you!

Cheers,

Heidi

ABC Fishing

Over the years I have been teaching preschool, this has been one of my favorite activities because the children really seem to like it and get involved. It is very simple to arrange. All you need is a dowel rod, yarn, a magnet, letter cutouts and paper clips. Attach the paper clips to the letter cut-outs (which I laminate). Then fix the rest of the items into a fishing pole with the magnet as the "worm."

I use the top of this sensory table as the pond, but you can just lay them on the floor or whatever container you can find that's large enough.

The children will take turns "fishing" for letters and when they catch one, tell what letter it is and what sound it makes.

Some other variations of this would be to use numbers instead or shapes, words, animal pictures, etc. It can pretty much be anything the children are working on. Also, you could have them try to catch a particular letter such as the first letter of their name.

Some extensions are graphing which letters were caught and how many times, arranging them in order in the pocket chart after they are caught, or asking questions about what words begin with that letter and even having them write the word.

I hope you have as much fun with this activity as we do!