Math

Are you looking for toys to encourage exploration and curiosity for your little explorer(s)? Maybe you're already thinking of your New Year's resolution to spend more time in the great outdoors, with afternoons filled with family nature hikes or child-led winter walks. Learning Resources has you covered! Consider these toys for your budding natural scientist and observant outdoor explorer, all of which fit neatly into a holiday stocking:

• Jumbo Magnifier & Tweezers: Strengthen those fine motor skills and investigate all things tiny with this durable set, which includes a hands-free, pop-out stand on the magnifying glass -- perfect for every feather, leaf, stone, and insect found on your next walk, whether it's around the block or on the trail.
• Headlamp Projector: This is a lightweight, two-for-one tool that includes a beam of light for evening adventures and doubles as a mini projector, with images of birds, mammals, and reptiles on two small disks! Let the imaginative play and educational storytelling begin!
• Big View Binoculars: Durable, simple to use, and with 6x magnification, perfect for your next adventure into the woods -- whether you're looking for birds or something more wild. Stomping around your neighborhood? Use these binoculars to encourage deeper observation of the world around them! Play I-Spy, go on a hunt for specific colors, and/or pair it with a journal to document all of your finds.

Looking for an easy way to stuff the stockings of multiple child explorers? Try these multi-packs!

• Big View Bug Jars: Cute, colorful, and practical! In the lid of each of these jars is a hidden magnifying lens, plus air vents for live specimens under observation. Set of six.
• Jumbo Magnifiers: Now, everyone can explore plants, insects, and other natural items to their heart's content! It comes in a rainbow of colors and is sized perfectly for little hands. Set of six. Spending time outside provides a wealth of benefits, from helping to regulate big emotions and calming the nervous system to strengthening gross motor muscles and providing new sensory exploration opportunities. Use these fun stocking-stuffer toys to foster scientific learning and so much more in the great outdoors!

About the Author, Sarah Yale: With a background in education, youth development, and restorative justice, Sarah Yale wears many hats, including Mom and Librarian. She endeavors to combine her love of children's books and the great outdoors to plan inclusive, play-based activities that foster curiosity and social-emotional learning. An advocate for literacy development, loose parts, and sensory play, Sarah's activities invite you to lean in, read up, and get messy together! See more of her ideas on Instagram at @staycurious_sadertot.

Your soon-to-be-Kindergartener was built for summer! There’s so much to do, see, and explore, both inside and outdoors. If you’re looking for some fresh, fun ideas to help keep your rising Kindergartner engaged and learning for the rest of the summer, have we got the activities for you! Read on for three days’ worth of developmental, educational, and social-emotional activities – plus some bonus activities, just for fun. And don’t miss our summer minicamp activity ideas for three- and four-year-olds

Kick off your first day of camp with some fine motor fun! Threading is an age-appropriate challenge for four-year-olds, resulting in a colorful creation they can wear or display. Set out some pipe cleaners and pony beads and thread a bracelet, create a beaded pattern for your preschooler to follow, or stick some spaghetti sticks into a ball of molding dough and thread penne noodles to make Stegosaurus. Find more threading ideas here.

Download this free, printable worksheet, grab some counters, and practice numbers and counting with your kiddo! Count the letters in their name (writing it out on a sheet of paper might help), their age, the number of siblings they have, and more!

You may have seen the pretty, painted rocks people are leaving around neighborhoods across the country as a symbol of kindness. You can do the same! Take a walk and find some medium-sized rocks with nice flat or rounded surfaces. Clean them off and pop them in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes – you can use the time to talk about things that make your kids happy as inspiration for what they might draw. Let the rocks cool just a bit, then use crayons to draw their ideas! When the rocks are dry, use a Sharpie to write caring messages like “Kindness”, “Love”, or “Joy”. Then place them in your neighbors’ gardens to brighten up their days! Find other kindness activities here.

End your first day of minicamp with another cool-down activity – making a snowstorm in a bottle! Gather a glass or see-through plastic jar, vegetable oil, white paint, glitter, and an Alka-Seltzer tab, and follow these instructions to make it snow inside!

Using the proper pencil grip is the key to legible writing. Help your kiddo practice this summer by providing a sheet of properly formed capital letters to trace using a variety of differently sized crayons, markers, and pencils. Around age five, kids should be able to manipulate a writing utensil with three fingers rather than move their wrists or arms. Learn more about proper pencil grasps here.

Brush up on those math skills with a scavenger hunt around the house! Print this list of things to look for and set off to find everyday math items, including number words, items of certain sizes and shapes, pairs of things, and more!

Playing school is a wonderful way to build your child’s creativity and imagination. It also allows your soon-to-be-scholar to mentally prepare for going to school and build the confidence they’ll need to thrive there. Set up some school-ish materials, like a chalkboard or easel, books, paper and crayons, and stickers, and follow your little one’s lead. Will they read to their stuffed animals? Teach you letters and numbers?  Draw a picture? 

Nothing is nicer after a day of summer minicamp than a delicious popsicle! Follow our favorite recipe for fruit and veggie pops, working together to squeeze the lime, drop the ingredients into the blender, stir the elements, and insert the popsicle handles. Talk about the foods as you work with them – what color are they? What is their texture like? What letter does that food start with? How might it taste?

Stretchy, sticky, and squishy, you probably know that slime is awesome. But did you know that slime also helps builds fine motor skills? Measuring, pouring, mixing, stirring, squeezing, smashing, rolling, and twisting are all great ways to strengthen hand muscles and build fine motor skills! Start your last day of minicamp off with some slime, using our favorite recipe.

Practice letter identification, letter sounds, and word building with this simple stamp-and-learn activity! Set out some molding dough (or make your own – another fun minicamp activity!), tools like plastic rolling pins, cutters, kid-safe scissors, and letter blocks or magnets. Then show your child how to flatten the dough and stamp a letter into it. Say the letter name as they stamp, make its sound, and say a word that starts with that letter. See if your child can find the letters in their name and stamp them all in a row. 

The forces of physics are all around us, and summer is a great time to see them in action. Floating in the pool, rolling a ball, and dropping an ice cream cone (oh NO!) are perfect examples of buoyancy, motion, and gravity. These simple activities will demonstrate some of the most fundamental properties of physics in a fun way – and you can follow up your lesson by making a simple machine (instructions included).

Print this free career worksheet, cut out the word cards and images, and match them up! Talk about each job, the responsibilities of each job, the qualities each requires, and which one interests your child the most (and the least).

It takes several years for kids to truly master subtraction. Your little learner will likely be introduced to the idea in Kindergarten and will work continue to work on “taking away”, as well as other basic math skills, through about the 4th grade. You can help support the concept at home, with simple, playful activities designed to teach the concept and fluidity of numbers, which is proven to support long term math success, versus simply memorizing math facts. Below are a few of our favorite ways to practice subtraction:

Start With… Manipulatives!

Manipulatives are the name of the game for introducing the concept of subtraction. You can find manipulatives specifically designed for math activities, including everything from ten frames and dots to sets of dinosaurs. You can also make your own manipulatives, using anything from paperclips to marshmallows, toy cars, or wooden blocks.

No matter the tool or the game, you’ll want to talk your kiddo through the process. Count your original quantity out loud, then remove some of the objects, set them aside, and count your original set again. Then count the quantity you removed. Talk your mini mathematician through the process, using math vocabulary like plus, minus, and equals. Verbally share as you go, saying things like: “We have one, two, three, four, blocks. Let’s take away one, two blocks. Now we have one, two blocks. Four blocks minus two blocks equals two blocks.”

Then Try… Dice, Cards, or Dominoes

Once your little one is comfortable with the visual concept of taking a quantity away from another quantity, they’re ready to move onto mental math. Encourage them to think of the numbers they’re seeing as objects, see the total, then remove the quantity they’re subtracting.

You can make this mental math practice way more fun with dice, cards, or dominoes! Roll two dice, determine which number is bigger, then subtract the smaller number from the bigger one. Draw two cards and do the same. Or pull a domino from the box and subtract the smaller side from the larger.

And Finally… Riddles

Mental math wizards will get a kick out of number riddles. Write one number, 1-10, on each of 10 index cards, pick three, and lay them out face up. Then give your child a series of clues to help eliminate some of the numbers on the cards and help them determine which of those three numbers you have chosen.

For example, you might have cards with the numbers 5, 9, and 2. You’ll say, “The number I am thinking of is NOT 6 minus 4.” And “The number I am thinking of is NOT 10 minus 1.” Your kiddo will use these clues to determine that you are thinking of number five.

Like all learning, the best way to make it stick is to make it fun! Try these subtraction tricks with your kids and help lay the foundation for future math success.

Learning Resources do an excellent job at making STEM learning accessible to children of all ages. One of the reasons we love their products so much is because they have a natural ability to allow my two children to create and play together at a challenging level but not frustrating. The new STEM Explorers™ Marble Runners is an excellent example of this, and we’d love to share more about it with you in this blog.

What’s Included

This may seem like a very simple set on first inspection, and I’ll admit that I was hesitant about how long the play would last. I was so wrong! The set includes 13 track pieces, two balls, and a double-sided booklet with instructions and fun track suggestions. The track pieces are made from dense foam and have reusable self-adhesive backings, which means they can be stuck to windows, removed, and used again. If the pieces start to lose their stick, simply wet them with a damp cloth, and the stick factor is reactivated.

First Impressions

Initial impressions are always key when it comes to STEM toys. My four-year-old and eight-year-old showed genuine excitement when I got the box out. They’d never made a vertical marble run before, let alone one on our big glass door! The reason I say that first impressions are essential is because if the initial play is one of frustration or it lacks engagement, then it’s often the case that the toy will have a short life span with my kids. If, however, they are intrigued and can use the product with success, they are most definitely going to get lots of play from it. I loved how they could easily stick the pieces to the window, and they were so excited to build a track together.

Trial and Error All the Way

STEM products have a great ability to encourage children to work collaboratively and also to evoke a sense of trial and error. Sometimes the ‘error’ part can be challenging for children to overcome. They build the track, and it doesn’t work, but how do they respond? Do they give up? Or can they problem-solve to adjust the track accordingly. My four-year-old wanted it to work the first time, but my eight-year-old was so patient and did a great job gradually moving pieces to fix any problems. This is where getting them to work as a team paid off. My eight-year-old would adjust the pieces and say to his sister, ‘let’s test it now.’ She would drop the ball, and they would analyze where it went wrong. Then my eight-year-old would make the adjustments, and they would test it again. I loved watching them in action together.

The fact that the pieces are easy to remove and put back on the glass was a huge bonus. The design also means that there are so many fantastic combinations of tracks that you can build. My son always wants to create his own, which I love about him. We also had fun testing out some of the suggested tracks on the instruction booklet. I like how they gradually increase in difficulty, and the images are clear and easy to follow.

Teamwork for the Win

This is an awesome product for siblings or friends to use together, as well as it is perfect for classroom play. We had little sis inside moving the pieces and big bro outside looking at the set-up from the other side of the glass. They thought this was pretty cool and loved following the ball together through the glass. Collaborative learning has so much to offer in terms of developing communication skills and helping children improve skills such as patience and empathy. It would be a blast to have two sets of Marble Runners and work side by side doing marble races!

Learning resources have done it again with another quality STEM product ideal for collaborative play and learning! Be sure to share your Marble Runners track ideas on social media for us to test out.

Writer’s Bio

Lucy Baker is a Mom of two (4 & 8 years old) passionate about creative play and hands-on learning. She firmly believes in providing children with the opportunity to learn through play and being part of their play journey as a parent. See more of her creative play ideas and process art projects on Instagram @findthelittlemind, and over on her blog, Find the Little Mind.