Tot School...Homemade Math Manipulatives.

Being a teacher in my former life means that my wheels are constantly turning on a day to day basis when it comes to learning at home with our kids. Most children couldn't live with out apple juice or milk not so for AG. If he was stranded on an island and could have an endless supply of something it would be Simply Orange Orange Juice. And yes, he's very brand loyal and refuses to drink anything but Simply Orange. Anyways, months ago I began to wonder if there was something I could make with all the lids we recycle. They are the perfect size to pick up with small hands and so I began to stock pile lids. A few weeks back I decided to make my first project...a set of numbers 1-10. So, I found a set of numbers online that I liked and printed them off. Then I used my 2in circle punch from Creative Memories to cut them all out and I attached them with a nice coat of rubber cement. Pretty easy if you ask me. Here's what they look like:

Now I have enough tops to make more numbers and a set of ABCs...I just haven't had the time to finish them. The possibilities are endless with this concept. In addition to saving OJ tops I have been saving baby food pouch tops. For whatever reason my kids hit 9/10 months and refuse to be spoon fed. This time around we've been able to buy Avi-Kate baby food in pouches to use in addition to the table food that she eats. (At 9 months AG was completely on table food!) Well, these tops are great and I've just been stashing them away. This past week we pulled them out along with the OJ tops for the first time and AG was beside himself with excitement. Here's what we did:

First, he organized the OJ lids in numerical order.

 Then, he wanted to sort all the tops in to piles by color...I said go for it. :)

 Sweet boy hard at work.

 Once he had everything sorted the way he wanted it he began to count out the tops to correspond with each OJ lid.

 To take it one step further I pulled out a set of Mickey Number Flashcards from the fabulous $1 section at Target. He then matched the cards to each lid. 

 Excited that he did it all by himself. 

We are really working on numbers 1-10 at the moment and will move on to 11-20 soon. AG's 'lessons' are based on whatever he is interested in at the moment and we try and do something together when Avi-Kate naps. Some days we do 'school' and other days we don't I am merely using it as a way to introduce concepts so that when he starts school this fall he has something to jump off of. It's very low key and a great way for us to do something one on one. Have you made any homemade manipulatives?