Playing with Numbers

As much of the learning as possible in our house is done hands on and FUN! Sometimes I forget how much fun our "every day things" are, until I hear about them later from a neighbor or friend.  When I was growing up...and I have all these for my kids too...our "toys" were tangrams, geoboards, base ten blocks and Cuisenaire rods and weights. I love that my kids love these things too!

My neighbor just called me and told me her daughter asked for a "money box" like Elias' for Christmas!!! HAHAHA!!  This is an old old simple play cashbox, not even a cash register, just the drawer part, with fake bills and coins in it.



I play "McDonald's" with the kids. The game gets more advanced as they get older.  At first it's number recognition, we play with just one bill, so everything would be $5, or $20 etc. Then it's coin recognition, everything is a quarter, or a dime. Then everything is simple, $5.25  so exact change is given back. That's where we are now. Eventually we'll get to more complicated change giving.  For now it's cool that the kids enjoy playing and know what fronts and backs of coins look like and how much they're worth.



We all take turn being the order taker and the customer..it's fun, especially when you order 25 cheeseburgers, 10 fries and 10 drinks, and your "total" is $1 !  Well, we'll worry about reality vs imagination some other time!!

For number recognition we also play Go Fish  (all the time) , War and Bingo.