My in-box is overflowing with offers to join different websites for learn-at-home resources. Of course, these resources are not free and most require a color-printer for your home. Have you priced color inkjet refills? I’d rather send my youngest child to college! We don’t need to be so fancy when it comes to learning at home - we just need to give our children different opportunities to practice their skills through play. For today’s activity, you will need a muffin tin, muffin cups (or circles cut from paper) and some small items for counting.
Muffin Tin Alphabet Match
To set up this activity, you will need to write capital letters on the muffin cups. Next, you write their lowercase counterpart on something. I used these wooden hearts that were left over from a craft, but you can also use small stones, buttons, or even a piece of paper. As your child matches the lowercase and uppercase letters, you can review the letter sounds. Extend the game by playing “I Spy” to find objects that start with different letters sounds. For example, “I spy something that starts with F.” Use all of the letters in the alphabet and mix them up as your child starts to recognize them easily.
Muffin Tin Counting
For this math activity, you will begin by writing numbers on the muffin cups. Practice identifying the numbers with your child. Ask him/her to practice counting to that number. Next, have your child count out the objects for each muffin tin. I used marbles for this game, but you can use any manipulatives you like. This is a good activity to do at snack time, using small pieces of cereal. Once your child has counted objects for each muffin cup, go back and count with him, pointing at each object while you count. This reinforces one-to-one correspondence and helps to make sure each object is only counted once.
