Rice, beans and water - more fun than you may realize

[cassidy336]

I have found two great activities that my son absolutely loves.  One is rice and beans.  I have a plastic container that is about 4" high and I filled it with 12 lbs of rice.  I added a few handfuls of black beans.  We put cups, funnels, trucks, you name it in there.  He will stick with this for up to an hour.  He loves pouring and making believe it is different types of surfaces like snow or grass.

The other activity we do is play with water.  I saved some water bottles and two liter bottles.  We take a funnel and a pitcher with a pour spout and put all that into a plastic container outside.  He pours water using the funnel and the pitcher and really has a great time.

I saw both of these on a site about learning activities; supposedly they help with math.  I am shocked at his attention span for both of them. 

Anyone else have some good activities that may not use traditional toys?

[Hsmummy]

Like the sound of these - which site did you see them on?

[cassidy336]

I will try to remember the site.  We have been doing these for a few months so I can't think of where I got them from.  I'm surprised he is still so interested in them, but he is.

[DadDude]

Yep, my boy can play with beans for hours, seems like.  Also, he loves to pour water from one cup to another and back again--great fun for amazing amounts of time.  We have got a whole big bag of buttons--he loves playing with those.  We also let him use beads and pasta.  Also, some play money.  It makes a lot of clutter but he likes it.

Didn't occur to us to get him a funnel...or a baster.  We'll have to do that.

He's counting very well indeed, I'm sure others can do better, but I'm happy that he's sometimes able to recognize four and five on sight (but sometimes, he needs to count out three).  He's also rapidly improving in his ability to count objects.  I think his "record," though we aren't paying close attention to this, is 12.  He can count higher in many other ways (e.g., by tens, my "Counting by Steps" helped a lot with this), but being able to count out objects demonstrates a more robust understanding of number, I think.

[KL]

What great tips!

Coincidentally, Felicity was just having a bath, so I brought her 2 cups and now she's pouring water from one to the other!
Hope she'll be willing to get out of the bath within an hour!   

[nhockaday]

Anyone else have some good activities that may not use traditional toys?

My brother used to play with hotwheels in a baking sheet full of flour. It was really fun to drive the cars through the flour. You could clear paths, build mounds, crash the cars into the mounds; all kinds of fun stuff. It was kind of like snow.

[cassidy336]

My son would love the flour idea.  We went to NC last week and he saw snow for the first time and keep talking about it.  He keeps pretending his rice is snow, but flour is much more realistic.  Now, I just need to get over the mess factor and let him give it a try.  I have a sheet I put down for rice but it is still easy to pick up.

[Cristofori]

How very Montessori of you all.

How about this one:  tweezers and cotton balls and pom poms.  separate by color.

Or try walking on a tape line on the floor carrying a pom pom on a spoon (don't drop it) or a bell without ringing it.

Here's another (must supervise):  take a thumbtack and make holes "tracing" a picture you have drawn on construction paper (a star, heart, whatever) over carpet so that you can make a proper hole.  once you hav e made holes all the way around the picture, it can be gently pushed out.  You will then have the shape and the template of the shape.  Take a clean sheet of paper the same size but a different color.  Glue the template to one side and the shape to the other.  Kids love to do this.  (You may have to enlarge the grip part of the thumbtack if you child cannot grasp it -- a few rounds of duct tape?)

[Nikolett]

My kids all like rice, bean and water play too
Great idea for bath is to blow bubbles in a cup: put some water, a bit of baby bath or shampoo, stick a straw in and blow. The bubbles overflow and can be played with. When they get older (about 4) kids can learn to blow big bubbles from their soapy hands cupped together...
My girls always "cook" in the bath. We have a set of plastic pots and lids, cups, etc. and I let them use a few drops of different shower gels, etc.

[patreiche]

I am working on a presentation about measurement and here are two ideas to teach Math that are simple.

Take different size containers and pour water. Tall and thin, Short and fat, large to small and teach them about volume. This is probably best down in the bathtub.

Find two different flat objects that look alike but are largely different in size. Place little blocks or legos or something small on them to compare areas.

And of course teach them my presentations on measure. I have posted one already still working on the other one.

[ing]

At my son s preschool, they use corn flour, rice, bean,water, sand,finger paint, foam. For the foam, I dont know what exacly it is. But it looks like hair foam or shaving foam. Will ask the teacher next Monday. The children like the foam too. They can play for a long time.
One more thing, they use cube ice which has he flat side. The children can slide it from one side of the table to the other side on the plastic sheet. This boost they to play with other child.

All those things are good for sensory skills

[nhockaday]

Here are some articles about activities with water http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content3/waterplay.t.p.2.html

http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content4/water.play.learn.html

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