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Test out three different shapes and discover which is the strongest with this awesome printable shape activity with construction paper!<a href="https://icdn.kiwico.com/landing/at-home/2020_04-Kids-at-home-Printables--StrongestShape.pdf" target="_blank">Download the printable</a> to get started -- or follow the instructions below.

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Make your first shape with construction paper.Roll a piece of paper into a tube. Tape the seam to secure.

For more awesome activities that kids can do at home, visit our <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/store">KiwiCo store</a>! Every crate comes with all of the materials needed to get started and spark learning!

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Create another shape with construction paper.Crease a sheet of paper in quarters. Tape the seam to secure.

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Create a third shape with construction paper.Crease a sheet of paper in thirds. Tape the seam to secure.

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Start Stacking!When you’re done making your shapes, pick one and start stacking books on top. You're ready to get started on your printable shape activity with construction paper! Make sure the books are centered. Keep stacking your books until the shape can’t hold any more and it topples over. Do the same thing for the other two shapes.

Ask & ObserveWhich shape was the strongest? Which shape was the weakest? How many books did the strongest shape hold up? How many did the weakest hold?How do you think the shape of each piece effects how strong it is? Do shapes with angles work better than shapes with no angles?

Tape

Construction Paper

books

Printable Shape Activity with Construction Paper

math

indoor game

game

We have started exploring math concepts with hands on materials at my house. The latest concept is greater than and less than.  We started our math lesson by creating an egg carton alligator puppet and ended up learning about the greater than and less then symbol.

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We started  by painting the bottoms of two egg cartons white and the tops of two egg cartons green. 

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When the paint had dried, we used a hole punch to place a row of five holes along the sides of the white egg cartons and green egg cartons.  

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We cut of one row off the end of  each of the white sections. It made it easier to fit the while sections into the green ones, One row  of the cut off rows was saved  to use for the gator's eyes. Each white section of the carton was  then placed into the green section. 

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The green yarn was then woven down through first hole in the back of the green carton and through the white carton. We wove the yarn in and out of the carton until reached the end of that side. The yarn was then passed though the hole on the front of the other side of the carton. My son then finished stitching the second side of the green carton to the white carton. When he had reached the end of the carton. I tied of the end of the yarn.

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The final step in creating the gator puppet was to color black eyeball on this eyes with a marker and attach them to the top of one of the green cartons.

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Colored dots were then placed on large piece of white paper.  We put dots on, but you could use any sticker and any amount of stickers in your two groups as long as they aren't the same.

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We put the paper up a stand, but you could keep yours on the floor. JDaniel held the puppet's mouth areas opened and closed and I told me about  talked about how to hold the gator's mouth to show that he doesn't like to eat less than he has too when their are a small number of dots.

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The gator holds his mouth open to gobble up the largest number available.  We had a lot of fun opening and closing the gators moth.

paint

paintbrushes

marker

yarn

hole punch

egg carton

glue

stickers

construction paper

Alligator Puppet: Less Than, Greater Than

This counting jar game for kids is a super fun hands-on way to count to 100 and practice the mathematical skill of estimation. You can count by 1's, 5's and 10's while filling up a collection of jars. Pull out these fun math manipulatives any time to reinforce learning.

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In addition to some mason jars we already had on hand, we saved other jars for a few weeks (peanut butter jars, applesauce jars, pickle jars, etc.).

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Next, my daughter and I looked around the house for things we thought we had at least 100 of. This was great practice for estimating. We chose wooden craft sticks, legos, rubber bands, little wooden craft blocks, pasta noodles, Unifix cubes, coins, crayons and small Lincoln logs.

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Then we began counting and filling jars. Again, she had to use her estimation skills to choose a jar she thought would hold 100 of the items she was counting.

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I was prepared to spread this activity over several days but she was really excited about it and filled all the jars in one day.

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With our wooden craft sticks, I had her divide them into piles of ten, then count by ten to 100 before placing them in the jar.

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She had to choose a jar that was not only wide enough but tall enough for the sticks.

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She discovered that we did not have a jar large enough for our larger Lincoln log pieces, but the small ones fit just fine.

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With all of our jars filled, it was time to find a place to hold our collection.

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We chose a shelf in our play room and I asked her to line them up from largest to smallest.

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Below our shelf is our white board, so I handed her our box of magnetic letters and helped her spell out "We can count to 100!"

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We love the way our jar counting game turned out. And we plan to use it for more practice counting by 1's, 5's and 10's.

jars

Anything you have 100 of

Counting Jar Game for Kids

learning game

Learn colors, practice sorting, and do a little bit of counting with this simple and fun springtime activity.

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We started out our activity by gathering some colored paper, a variety of different colored pom poms and an empty muffin tin. I cut some circles out of each color of paper then filled each section of the muffin tin with a different colored circle. 

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Next I mixed up all the pom poms. My 3-year-old began sorting them, by placing each color pom pom in the section of the muffin tin that had the matching color. 

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She really enjoyed this, and was so proud of all her sorted pom poms! After we sorted colors for a while we wanted to try some counting.

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I took all the circles out of the muffin tin and drew a different number of Easter eggs on each one. I then placed them back in the muffin tin face up. (Leave the backside of the circles blank so you can flip the circles over and do the color sorting activity again.)

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My daughter had fun counting the Easter eggs, then finding the  correct color and number of pom poms to place in each section of the muffin tin. 

pom-poms

muffin tin

colored paper

scissors

Circle paper punch

Spring Color Sorting and Counting Activity

indoor project

birthday party games

Skip-counting is a great way to learn multiplication tables. We love using whole body learning to accomplish these tasks. Our hopscotch board allows us to do this in any kind of weather, because it's in our kitchen! Hop along with us and see how we made it.

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First, we gathered our supplies. This super easy project only requires three things.

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Next, I began to build the hopscotch board. Lines on a wood or tiled floor served as great guides, but you could do this on carpet as well, whatever your tape will stick to.

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I started at the top with one box, then made a double box beneath that.

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Here's the finished board. How many boxes you make depends on how high your child wants to count. 

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Next I added the numbers by placing four or five overlapping pieces of tape (we had a wide roll of tape) in the center of each box and drawing in the number with a permanent marker. 

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Overlapping the pieces of tape will ensure that you don't get permanent marker on your floor. Also, while the kids were happy to assist, I didn't want them using permanent marker anywhere near my wood floors so I gave them a job of smoothing down the tape before I drew on it.

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Next, I sent the kids off to look for small bean bag toys after I heard them discussing a plan for getting on shoes and going outside to look for rocks to play the hopscotch game.

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The board was finally complete. The permanent marker ensures that they won't get ink on their feet while they play.

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We made our board to count by 2's as an introduction to skip counting for my 4 year old, as well as a way to teach even numbers. Learning to alternate hopping on one foot, then two, is also a great gross motor skill for him to practice.

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We've left the board on our kitchen floor for about a week now and there have been lots of impromptu hopscotch games. Sometimes they just hop through on their way out of the kitchen without actually playing the game, but getting some great practice skip counting the numbers and some gross-motor fun.

painter's tape 

permanent marker

Indoor Skip-Count Hopscotch

This was a great activity to keep little hands busy!  My two-year-old loves to count and is constantly counting everything in sight.  We are working on matching numbers and objects so this was the perfect activity for him.  It also worked on those fine motor skills and kept his older siblings busy at the same time.  I love an activity that everyone can enjoy!

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Gather all your materials.  We used a bag of multicolored beads from a craft kit and the kids loved that they came in all different shapes and sizes.  The large beads were great for the younger kids!

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We counted out ten pipe cleaners and wrapped a small piece of tape on one end of each pipe cleaner to create a flag.  This helped to keep the kids from pulling their beads all the way off the pipe cleaner.

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Then, we wrote a number from 1-10 on the masking tape.  We chose to use smaller numbers since I was focusing on counting with my two- and three-year-olds.  

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The kids each got a few pipe cleaners and had fun stringing the correct number of beads on each pipe cleaner.  They got lots of fine motor practice and counting practice.  My two-year-old is very into counting right now so this was the perfect activity for him!  (Be sure you watch young kids with the beads, though.  Only you know whether your child is ready to work with small beads yet.)

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Once all the beads were strung we put them in order from smallest to largest.  The kids got confused because, since we used different-sized beads, the longest strands didn't always have the most beads.  This was a great chance for us to work on reasoning skills and recount some of our strands.  My 4-year-old especially benefited from this.

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We also pulled out a white board and marker and used our bead strings to do some simple addition problems.  After our math lesson, the kids had a great time stringing and emptying their pipe cleaners.  They made patterns and rainbows while I finished making dinner!

pipe cleaners

beads

masking tape

markers

whiteboard and marker

Number Bead Stringing

at-home learning

Looking for a way to beat the heat or have fun indoors? This balloon game is a colorful solution. Ages two to ten will all love this game! 

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Blow up 10 balloons and number them 1 to 10 with a permanent marker. Hide the balloons around the house. (One of the kids can do this step, too.) Have your kids work as a team to find the balloons in order. If they find the 9, they can't get it out of its spot until they have found 1-8. 

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My son loved playing this game with his big sisters. After finding all of the balloon, he enjoyed counting all 10 and identifying the numbers. It was wonderful watching the kids work together to accomplish a group goal. Hiding the balloons upstairs and downstairs worked out well because it got the kids moving. My ten-year-old said, "At first I thought this game was going to be boring, but it was actually a lot of fun." High praise indeed!  

balloons

permanent markers (e.g., sharpies)

Numbered Balloon Hide and Go Seek

I'm always on the look out for fun new ways to practice math.  These fit the bill perfectly because they're so adaptable to more than just math.

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Peel the stickers off your backing sheet and stick them onto your cubes.  With the size of our stickers we fit one sticker per side, but that worked well for one of my planned projects with these.

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Some things to be aware of when choosing stickers for this project.  Measure your sticker against your cube.  The penguins we chose were almost too big for the cube, and some had to be trimmed.

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While the puffy stickers were easier to pull off for my son, they had the problem of being bumpy and not resting well.  In hindsight I should have just found some normal kid Christmas stickers, not scrapbooking ones.

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When all of your cubes have stickers on them take a final look around to make sure they have all sides covered.

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Now gather up as many of the cubes as will fit in your hand and roll those cubes!

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Figure out your math problem and write it down.  I was intrigued to see how my son grouped the cubes.  It was fun to listen to his reasoning.

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My other planned activities with these: story telling (roll the cubes and tell a story with them), graphing (roll a die and record the results), and probability (which sticker is most likely to turn up after 10 rolls).  There are a lot of fun ideas you can do with this.

Panda Crate

Sprout: Koala Crate

Labs: Kiwi Crate

World: Atlas Crate

Studio: Doodle Crate

Labs: Tinker Crate

Studio: Maker Crate

Labs: Eureka Crate

33 awesome math games projects for kids

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