Tag Archives: mathematics for early childhood

Combat Boredom with Board Games – #readilearn

Note: This article was first written for and published at the Carrot Ranch Literary Community as part of a series supporting parents with children learning at home. The benefits of playing board games are the same whether played at home or at school. If you have older children or adults available to support children while they play, board games are an excellent activity for learning in groups across many areas of the curriculum.

One of the best ways to have fun while learning, or to learn while having fun, is by playing board games. Playing games together as a family helps to bond family relationships. Adjustments can be made to suit most numbers and ages and rules can be adapted to suit your purposes. While the main thing is to have fun together, there is a lot of learning going on too.

Social Skills

  • One of the greatest benefits of playing board games is the development of social skills.
  • Some of the social skills children learn include:
  • Getting along and taking turns
  • Playing fair — accept the roll (if dice are used) or draw (if cards are used) for example, and respond accordingly: don’t try to pretend it

Continue reading: Combat Boredom with Board Games – readilearn

Delivering a sneak peek for Easter

Launching soon - readilearn2

For the past few years I have been preparing early childhood teaching resources for a website that I hoped would be up and running by now. Unfortunately, there have been some delays with the developer. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a resource with an Easter theme to give you a free taste test. This will be of interest mainly to early childhood teachers or parents of young children. Everyone else is excused.

The resource, called “Easter Delivery”, is a story about twin bilbies, Benny and Belinda, who get to deliver eggs to the families of some friends for the first time. It incorporates addition concepts and is suitable for use with the whole class on the interactive white board.

The story involves the children in helping Benny and Belinda work out how many eggs they need to deliver to each family and the combination of packs they could choose. The maths concepts are probably most suitable to year one students but teachers may use their discretion about how much maths to include.

Included is an information sheet about the resource and three printable follow-up activities:

  • Benny and Belinda’s Easter Activity – children record the number of people in their own family and draw and calculate the number of eggs Benny and Belinda would deliver
  • A Happy Easter Card from the Bilbies – a card with a picture to colour and blank inside for children’s own messages
  • The Bilbies’ Easter Colouring Page

The resource is available clicking on the image until Thursday 24 March 2016. Hopefully it will be available on my website for Easter 2017!

© Norah Colvin 2016

© Norah Colvin 2016

Yes. It is a bit of shameless promotion but it is also a gift for you to use if you would like to in the lead-up to Easter. The resource is not downloadable, but I am happy for the link to be shared with your early childhood teaching friends and colleagues. While it is not a requirement of use, I’d really appreciate some feedback. Please use the poll or share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Thank you

Thank you for reading. I do appreciate your feedback. Please share your thoughts.