Magnetic Discovery Jars

Pauline — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:09 +0000

I still need to find the right plastic containers for our magnetic discovery jars. Ones without bumps and ridges. Just straight, smooth, tall walls AND easy to peel off labels. Do you have a trick to get those annoying sticky labels off containers? If you do, I’d love to hear from you! Goodness knows how many containers I could re-use if only I could get those sticky labels off.

In the meantime, I made some temporary magnetic discovery jars using small cute glass jars. I say temporary because I don’t trust my kids around glass objects yet. For their magnetic wands, I hot-glued a magnet onto a craft stick. For fillers we used the following:

fuzzy pipe cleaners

bells

colourful paperclips

The hunt for more permanent containers continues…

N&M: 3 years, 7 months
E: 1 year, 6 months

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Button Paperclip Number Cards

Pauline — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:00:14 +0000

Two major personal discoveries of 2011: Pinterest and the glue gun. Combining these two wonderful finds, I made these adorable button paperclips. The original pin on Pinterest described them for use as bookmarks. I had other ideas – tools to help N&M learn the corresponding numeral for a set of objects.

This activity is for kids in the emergent counting stage. They know some number words but can’t count visible items. They either don’t know the correct sequence of number words or can’t coordinate the words with items.

Materials

Paper clips
Buttons
Glue gun
Cardboard
Marker

Making Button Paperclip Number Cards

1. Glue buttons onto paper clips
2. Cut large cardboard rectangles for number cards.
3. Write numerals zero to five on the number cards.

Aim of the activity

Help kids know the corresponding numeral for a set of objects.

How to play

Ask kids to slide the correct number of button paperclips onto the numeral cards.

Extension

Extend the activity by placing the numeral cards in either a forward or backward counting sequence.

Other skills practised

I found that this activity was also good for practising fine motor skills.

Sliding paperclips onto the numeral cards was tricky work for little fingers.

N & M: 3 years, 7 months

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Lessons Learnt Journal » paperclips

Magnetic Discovery Jars

Button Paperclip Number Cards