Easter Math Center FREEBIE!

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My students loved the self-checking St. Patrick's Day clip cards that I made a couple of weeks ago - so much that I made another set for Easter!

The set includes clip-cards for numbers 1-10 and have been carefully designed to be printed double-sided to create a self-checking center. 

I absolutely LOVE that my students can check their own work - and they love it too! I've put them up in my TpT store as a FREEBIE! 

Prep for this center is pretty easy - all you need to do is print (double-sided if you want them to be self-checking), laminate & cut. You'll need some kind of clips for students to mark the number - you could even use a dry erase marker or crayon if you wanted to! 

Skills: one-to-one correspondence, matching set of objects to numerals, counting to answer "how many?"

Aligned with Common Core standards: K.CC.A.1, K.CC.B.4, K.CC.B.5

Jelly Beans & Playdoh - Easter Leftovers

This year, after Easter, I somehow ended up with several bags of extra jelly beans ... I obviously thought I hadn't purchased them more than once! What's one to do with so many leftover sweets... ?

We played with them of course!

First, I put a bunch of big & little jelly beans in a tray with some toothpicks. I showed my 3 1/2 year old how to push the toothpicks into the jelly beans and connect them to make shapes. This was pretty difficult for him to accomplish & he poked his little fingers more than a few times. However, he was very interested & motivated to figure it out. He did eventually figure it out -- with close supervision, there were no major injuries and plenty of fine motor practice & early engineering going on...

A few days later, we added a bowl of jelly beans to some homemade Kool-Aid play dough... and made lots of interesting foods...

Here are a few of our creations...

The jelly bean color same off on our play dough as we played & the whole activity was sticky, but yummy smelling & tons of fun!

Peeps Play: Easter Sensory Bin

We made a stop at Dunkin' Donuts recently & my son saw those donuts with the Peeps on top. He insisted that he just HAD to have one... I caved & his new obsession with Peeps began. Here's the infamous donut before he gobbled it up... all except for the Peep!

The first time (hey, don't judge!) he had this donut, he ate the Peep then freaked out because he ate it - thanks Dunkin'! A few days later, we got another one of these ridiculously sugary confections & my son promptly took the Peep off & set it aside. He carried that little marshmallow bird around all day. Things started to stick to it. It was a little lopsided from being smooshed a few too many times. Then he started to dry out... I eventually threw it away - two days later! 

This is how the idea for our Peeps Sensory Bin was born...

I got out the Kool-Aid beans from a few weeks ago, added a pack of plastic Easter Eggs, some jelly beans that we played with yesterday, a handful of green plastic grass, and some bowls & spoons. Oh, and of course - a few beloved Peeps!

My son enjoyed filling & emptying the eggs. We compared the sounds of eggs filled with dried beans, jelly beans, plastic grass & squishy Peeps. Then he ran to the bathroom to get his boat -- for the Peep to drive:

He made a Peep nest -- complete with jelly bean eggs. "Shhh, Mama! The eggs is sleeping"

Then he went right on to make Peeps soup!

I'm glad he's not so fond of eating the Peeps for now... that's less of a sugar high that I have to deal with! He did, however, figure out that the jelly beans are yummy to eat, not just sensory bin filler.