Math Munchies: Fruit Loop Number Line

We love edible math around here...I mean, who doesn't, right? So I gave my just-turned-3-year-old a bowl of fruity-O's and some plastic lacing cord, the length of a necklace, and invited her to make a necklace. After finding lots of reasons to eat them before stringing them (this one's broken, I'll have to eat it; these two are stuck together - I'll have to eat them) she got to it and strung about 25 cereals. I tied a knot at the open end and showed her how to slide the loops down to the end as she counted. She let me do about two of them and then told me to "Stop, Mommy! It's my turn!"

It was fun to make, fun to use, and fun to eat. When she tired of counting (she counted the whole strand 4 or 5 times by herself) I tied it around her neck and she set to work nibbling her necklace!

MapQuest for Letter Mm

We printed out a map of our neighborhood on MapQuest.com and have been using it all week to plan our route:

• to the park


• to our church


• to the library

KID 1 loves being the map reader, marking our route before we step out the door, map in hand. Along the way, we make a note of everything we see that starts with "Mm." I will turn our word search into word cards for him to glue corresponding pictures from magazines on the back.

Some "Mm" words we found:

• mailbox
• magnolia seeds
• moss
• moth
• mower
• month (printed on a "Yard of the Month" sign)
• movers (on the side of the moving truck that delivered our piano!)

For more frugal tips and tricks, go here.

This Little Piggy Went Weee! Weee! Weee! All the way to the bank!

We've been using coins as math manipulatives.

Counting and sorting are so much fun

when you know you get to "keep the change" when you're done!

I labeled zipper bags with the coin names, so when KID 1 finished sorting and counting, he had to find the correct bag for each one. He could recognize the names by their beginning sound/letter.