Early Math Collaborative is a part of Erikson institute dedicated to providing math resources and professional development for educators and administrators.

The collaborative recently launched Download format; making resources available for immediately download and printable for everyone.

Enjoy these at-home activities cards  to help children explore numbers, shapes, sorting and more!

At-home activities cards are available in English and Spanish

Creating a nature scavenger color-hunt game is a fun nature-themed activity to get your group outdoors. This is an activity that, no matter their age, they will stay busy and observe as they play creatively and explore outside.
You can use a canvas panel or a piece of cardboard, I would say roughly the size of a medium-large pizza box. You then want to take 10 color paint swatches. I like to take a walk in my space and quickly take 10 pictures to match when I get to my hardware store. This is something that will, of course, change with the seasons.

We did 10 colors; my group is 2.5-4 years old. It’s entirely up to you how you choose to do this; you can cut smaller pieces of cardboard and give each child 5 colors; you can do it as a group as we did. You can add shapes by cutting the paint sample into a circle or triangle. You can also use this as a take-home activity for family engagement. Ask families to bring it back and discuss it with the group.

So after you have the canvas panel or cardboard, the color swatches, and 10 clothespins, you want to hot glue the colors swatches down and the clothespins. Then go explore for colors!

You can set rules for the game, like the color green can not be grass. Once the child finds the color, they yell “I found yellow”, clip it, and attach it to the board. We display our board and showcase it for pick up. Children are always so proud to name what they found and the color it matches.

Town Square and Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative present you with a great tool to use in helping communicate with families the Big Idea of early math. These bookmarks and graphics provide families with at-home activities, games, and book ideas connected to math concepts such as number sense, measurement, and patterns!
To share with families, print the PDF bookmarks or save the images and attach them to your newsletter, email, or social media post.

Bookmarks

Did you ever think about the many opportunities to incorporate math into something like an outing to the park or meal time? This resource was designed to be shared with families, but has plenty of excellent ideas for how to incorporate math into everyday routines and outings in your family child care home.  Each idea is connected to a math concept such as number, geometry, spatial sense, or measurement.

Family Note on Finding the Math