DIY Foam Pattern Blocks

Pattern blocks are the favorite math manipulative of every child. It helps to teach kids about shapes, patterns, fractions, Tessellations, and much more.  Moreover, it engages children for hours as a quite time activity.

Generally, pattern blocks are made out of plastic or wood. But, I made my pattern blocks using foam. All I needed were the templates, craft foam sheets and a pair of scissors.  It is very simple, cheap, and won’t make any noise while playing. Real pattern blocks come in standard colors – triangle-green, square-orange, rhombus-blue, thin rhombus-tan, trapezoid-red, and hexagon-yellow. As I didn’t have blue and tan, I used violet for rhombus and pink for thin rhombus.

You can download the pattern blocks templates from here and templates of pattern block mats from here

Here are some of the photos of my daughter’s creations.

RABBIT

 CAMEL

BABY

 GIRL

 

DOG

We both made few tessellations..

Sensory Play: Reptiles and Amphibians (With paper craft Lizards)

Sensory bins with various themes like farm animals, pond life, jungle, ocean and desert …are our very frequent activities.  Today, we made a sensory bin with a theme ‘Reptiles and Amphibians’.   As we don’t have any lizards in our miniature toy set, I thought of making it using paper.  Here is the tutorial of how I made a chameleon. 

Take a paper and draw one side of chameleon as shown.

Cut it. Let the tail be long enough.  

Using a toothpick or stick roll the end of tail.

Stick a black bindhi or glue a  mustard for eyes.

Cut a Thin red strip(split any one side) and glue it as the tongue.

Grabbing the insect using its long sticky tongue.

  

Lizards.  

I am not satisfied with the final outcome of the light color lizard.  The tail is not good.  So What, I said, “This Lizard lost its tail. Even if a lizard loses it's tail, the tail will grow and soon it will grow to its original shape and size.  Now only this lizard’s tail is growing.”

“Mmm.  I know this Ma.  That day, we read this in a story ‘can you give me your tail’.

Lizards have sticky legs too.

As Janani is only 4 years old, I just introduced the names of reptiles and amphibians and some simple facts.

Reptiles in the tub: Snake, Lizards, Tortoise, Crocodile, Alligators and Dinosaurs.

Amphibians in the tub: Frogs and Toads.

Reference:http://www.skiptomylou.org

Terrarium

I love terrariums and an article about a 50 years old terrarium drives me to try a closed terrarium. I think they are the best to teach kids about earth eco system. Our First Terrarium shown below is almost 9 months old. I watered the plant, the first day I planted it (First week of February 2013) and it is still growing without the need for watering.

This is our second one. I kept the bottle in a corner of a window. Hence, the plant leans towards light (Photo-tropism).  Terrarium is the best to teach about parts of a plant, transpiration and Photosynthesis process.

It is very easy to make a terrarium of your own with the following simple things,

A glass container

A small plant

Active charcoal

Handful of small pebbles

Soil

Active moss (optional)

Wash the glass container using mild soap and hot water and dry it.  Put the pebbles (Used for draining the excess water) then the charcoal (which keeps the soil fresh) then the soil.  Carefully place the plant. Just spray a little water and close the bottle. Keep the terrarium in indirect sunlight. Water the plant only if the soil is dried.

Handmade Toys and Story Telling

Who don't love stories? My fairy ‘J’ loves storybooks like anything. 'Little Red Riding Hood' is one of her favourite stories. I don't know how many times we read it before. 

So, this time to make it little more interesting, I prepared some toys using toothpaste tubes, and it came out very well.  (In our place, we don’t get peg dolls. So, I replace the peg wooden doll by half cut tooth paste tube.) Then I dressed the tubes to make various characters like little red, wood cutter and Red’s grandma. Then, our story telling session begins with those handmade toys.

Introducing the Woodcutter and his axe.

Now, my fairy ‘J’ is interrupting, “Little red’s mother is missing.” What to do? We are running short of toothpaste tubes. So, our story continues without little red’s mother.

They lived happily ever after. 

We really enjoyed both the toy making process and story telling. 

Fairy 'J': "Amma, Shall we play 'Cindrella' next?"
Me: " Time for homework. Shall we have it on another day?"