Archive for the ‘Homeschooling’ Category
Snail Races
April 18th, 2012 | 
Author: Although a menace in your garden, snails are fun little creatures for preschool-aged children to play with and observe. My boys never fail to find two or three snails of various shapes and sizes congregating at our backyard water fountain.
Snails are fun to watch. You would think they are slow creatures, but they can actually move quite fast. My boys brought several in the house in a plastic storage container, and after an hour or so I had to remind them to check on their snails because they were trying to escape!
Today we decided to hold a snail race. If you place the snails on a white piece of paper, you can see the trail of slime they leave behind them, which is sure to be of great curiousity to your preschooler. We lined up the snails in a row on the piece of paper and watched them take off. One headed straight for the finish line…it wasn’t even a close call!
This is a fun activity to do when learning about snails. Read a book about snails with your preschooler and then hold a snail race. Your preschooler will love it. You can also use this opportunity to teach them about numbers and measuring. You can lay a ruler next to the paper and measure how far the snails have travelled. Your preschooler should be able to help read the numbers on the ruler, and you can explain the concept of inches and centimeters. Activities like this really help reinforce these mathematical concepts in young children. Have fun, and enjoy this beautiful fall weather!
Snail resources: Are You a Snail? 
Copyright 2011, Christian-Parent.com.
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Paper Bag Counting Activity
When most people think of working on math skills, they picture sitting at a table and working on a math worksheet. Preschool-aged children aren’t ready to work at this level, but it’s not too soon to start introducing math concepts through math manipulatives. Manipulatives are items they can touch and play with. They can count them and sort them into groups. They make math much more visual and it is easier for them to understand basic math concepts.
There are many counting and sorting games you can play with your preschooler, but this paper bag activity is easy and fun to put together. All you need is some paper lunch bags, a marker, and something to sort into the bags. You can put as much effort into it as you want or have time for. Ours had a Halloween theme. The bags had pictures of haunted houses on them, and we sorted ghosts into the bags. You could adapt this idea for any subject, season, or holiday. It would be fun to use acorns for fall, snowmen for winter, or Easter eggs for Easter.
To get the activity ready for your child, you need to use the marker to write one number on the front of each bag: 1, 2, 3, etc. We used ten bags. You can also write the word next to the number, for example “one”, “two”, etc.
Open up the paper bags and set them out for your child. Help your child identify the number on each bag and have him or her sort their items into the bags.
That’s it! This activity is easy to pull out and set up when your child needs something to do.
Copyright 2011, Christian-Parent.com.