Legos/Duplos and chickpeas are some of our favorite things over here so we combined them into a fun matching/fine motor activity! You can also do this with small Legos but flip them over and use the back side of the Lego!

To Do: I dyed the chickpeas a long time ago for a different activity (using food coloring-super easy) and then my kids just matched the chickpeas to the holes on the Duplos! 

Match the amount on the hearts to the number on the envelope! My kids love pretending to mail letters and play “mail” so I made this math activity for Ollie (3). I just drew the amount 1-5 (in hopes of some subitizing practice) in different ways on the hearts and he was supposed to mail them or put them in the envelopes.  Once again, another simple activity!

I have mentioned before that I love using buttons. I find them such useful manipulatives for sorting, size comparison, counting and color recognition, I also love that the majority of buttons come with 2 or 4 holes for another added “sorting” feature!

So in this activity, Ollie was to match the buttons all while looking at the color he needed to match, the size and the amount of holes (to the number)! This is a great cognitive skill because kids are thinking about many different components at once which is so great for the brain!

Ollie (3) has been carrying around a tape measure for the past two days. It goes everywhere with us even in the car and he tries to measure things in the car except he thinks that the numbers on the tape measure mean how old someone is (like we all have our own number on the tape measure). He was trying to find my age on the tape measure and it wouldn’t quite stretch long enough for his little arms HA!.  So, I decided to try a little measuring activity with him so that we could practice understanding what “measuring” means in a 3 year old way.

Simple as it comes. Cut out different sized hearts, draw a line through the middle and use any small manipulatives to measure with and count to see which one has the most (longest) and which one has the least (shortest).

My kids love using the hole punch or any punchers I have. They can sit and just punch a random piece of paper for a long time so I decided to try a heart shape  and incorporate the pattern to punch.  Even though they themselves are not making or even saying the pattern, they are visually seeing a pattern so it counts! And…it is AMAZING for fine motor work (small hand movements by getting the paper between the punches all while squeezing the puncher and holding the paper). 

I used dot stickers to make the outside color pattern but you could use markers too (you could also have your child color the pattern themselves for an added step). If you don’t have punchers you could have them put stickers over the pattern to match colors or poke the pattern with qtip and paint.

Follow the rainbow pattern to see what colors are missing! Easy peasy for this Monday!

TO DO: Just draw a bunch of hearts in the shape of a rainbow. Where it says start, color all of those red so kids know each row starts there with RED.  Then fill in every now and then leaving a lot of them white for them to fill in in the pattern of a rainbow!