Kindergarten is a time to learn new mathematical concepts such adding doubles. It is also a time when children age 5 still need plenty of time to play and continue developing fine motor skills to help them hold the pencil and write.
By now, you have probably seen the many activity ideas available on Pinterest that use muffin trays to learn new concept. You can visit and follow my board here to get more ideas.
My current kindergartener is learning to add doubles. He actually really likes to add numbers! He is not too into worksheets, so using this muffin tray has been a nice alternative to building the skill.
When I first presented him the bowl with pom poms and tweezers, he said “aha! I am going to bake!”
I smiled and said we are going to bake and take orders. ” 🙂 The orders were scalloped circle papers we punched out earlier. That was another exercise to be able to further develop the hand muscles. He really likes to punch out paper.
Anyways, so he placed each circle in the muffin tray and began filling his orders. In other words, he used the tweezers and picked out the amount of pom-poms needed for that order (the sum of tr doubles).
He had fun. He didn’t have to fill out a worksheet this time but he still got to practice adding doubles.
Next time, we will make it more challenging. We are going to take cupcake orders for double 5 to get all the way to double 10.
Have fun adding and baking cupcakes!
Fabi
Bilingual Mami 