I had Ollie make his way through this subitizing Maze this morning (Subitizing is the ability to rapidly identify a set of 5-6 objects without counting–see my previous subitizing post for more explanation).  Since he was “4” I had him do the #4 maze –so I showed him where to start and then he had to color and connect all the squares with 4 dots in them! I didn’t have time to make a printable but I am hoping to do so this weekend!

*Tip* When doing this make the number pattern first in the boxes and then fill in the rest of the boxes with ONLY the numbers you did not use (makes it so much easier)

This is a great fine motor activity to work on getting the paper clips attached to the cardboard flowers as well as a math activity for one-to-one correspondence! I used the back of a cereal box to cut out circles for the flowers (so they are sturdier than paper) and Ollie (4) colored them with markers. Instead of just clipping, I added the math component to put a certain amount of clips on each flower to make their petals! Here’s hoping the flowers begin blooming here soon in Minnesota!

Calling all baseball lovers! Since baseball season has begun I thought we would try doing something with baseballs and this pattern activity is so simple and easy!  You can make up whatever kind of pattern you want and your kiddos can finish it off by drawing the stitches!

Let’s practice a little cutting by cutting the toothbrush bristles! This activity is to work on fine motor(cutting) and instead of just cutting lines I turned it into a toothbrush for a more engaging experience! It was also fun for both of my boys because they got to hold the handle while they cut just like they would hold a toothbrush! 

TIP: Staple the paper to the popsicle stick instead of glue so that when they are done cutting you can easily rip that one off and put a new one on  AND by using a stapler you can just pull the staple out when done and reuse the stick for another activity!

Snip, Snip, Snip!

I had Ollie do/finish this in the car while we brought Max to school in the morning! It kept him busy the whole time. We ran out of paper towels this morning so I just used this recycled roll, wrote all the uppercase letters on it and the lowercase on the dot stickers and he matched!

We make a lot of kabobs at our house, between vegetables and fruit and my kids love  putting them together. For a fun “make believe” activity today, I let my boys create kabobs out of playdough! They rolled a bunch of different balls (great fine motor) and then they added them to the skewers to represent fruit or vegetables! It was fun to see what kind of “things” they wanted to put on their kabob. In the second photo, they put them on their pretend grill to cook! 

Both of my boys enjoyed doing this activity, even my 6 year old who can cut pretty well enjoyed it! It involves fine motor strengthening while recognizing numbers, counting and naming numbers. Can’t get much easier for a little fine motor and math fun! Oh, and I also snuck in a pattern with the number colors.

Help the bunny find it’s missing egg! I quickly made this activity while Ollie ate breakfast this morning (that is how quick a set-up can be).  Simply draw bunnies with different patterns on their ears and a matching egg and MATCH based off of the patterns! It is a rainy cold day here today so there might be a lot more of these simple activities throughout the day but you can’t beat the easy set-up!

Super easy for a Friday. Ollie (3) worked on counting forward and counting backward. Counting backward is just as important as forward but so easily can be forgotten about. Ollie used beads to represent the numbers but any small manipulatives would work.  Another idea would be to start counting at 3-13 and back from 13-3 so kids learn to start counting and subtracting from other numbers besides 1 and 10 🙂