This post is republished from the readilearn blog.

Hi, and welcome again to the readilearn blog. I hope you’ve had a good week.

Rarely, when the costs of education are being calculated, is the contribution made by teachers from their own pockets acknowledged. It is not very well publicised that many teachers spend a lot of their own money resourcing their classrooms, which would be far less interesting places if teachers refused to contribute in this way.

Today I demonstrate that not all resources need be expensive. A versatile, free, and readily available resource is the humble bottle cap or lid, which  is often discarded, but can fulfill a number of functions in the classroom.

It doesn’t take long to gather an extensive collection of lids even on your own. But ask your children to bring in lids from home and the collection builds even quicker.

Lids have many uses.

Children can, for example:

Sort by colour or size

Order according to size – diameter or height

Make patterns – repeating or growing

Count – by ones, twos or fives

Learn to subitise, and discover conservation of number

Compare, add, substract and share

Measure length and mass

Use for collage or craft, or as tokens when playing games

These are just a few ideas. What other uses have you found for lids? Please share in the comments below.

What’s new – Uploaded this week!

These ideas and others are  now available in a free maths resource Caps off for maths.

Getting to know readilearn resources

Snakes and Ladders is a popular game and great for maths groups. With some guidance from an adult, the game can be used to stimulate mathematical thinking alongside practice of computations. The readilearn resource Snakes and Ladders – An activity for maths groups provides suggestions that can be given to an assistant to maximise learning opportunities while playing the game.

Please contact me if you have any questions. I welcome your feedback, especially suggestions for improvements to existing resources and ideas for new ones.

Remember, if you haven’t yet subscribed, an introductory discount of 20% is available to all who subscribe during 2016. Just use the coupon code welcome1 at the checkout to receive your discount.

I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend.

Thank you for reading.

Happy teaching and learning,

Norah

You can contact me:

via email hello@readilearn.com.au

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on my other blog NorahColvin.com

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All images in this post are copyright Norah Colvin.