Tales of the unexpected with The Boy, my pride and joy.
Number bonds to ten and twenty are an important thing for infants to understand and learn. Practise, practise and more practise is the key to ensuring that children are able to remember them so that the answers just come instinctively, but worksheets and endless sums are boring and offputting.
We've recently discovered the wonders of Elmer and I thought it would be great to create our own colourful elephant using a key and sums with answers between 10 and 20.
I'm very fortunate that I have a fabulous sponsor for Britmums Live! in Orchard Toys, and as a result we've had a chance to review some of their amazing games and puzzles this year. Their latest game, entitled 'Baa Baa', is another excellent resource, and as always is incredibly fun.
We've got quite a few Orchard Toys jigsaw puzzles, especially the big ones, and I'm a big fan of their brightly coloured and attractively drawn illustrations. They are very attractive for pre-schoolers and The Boy is always drawn to Orchard Toys' games and puzzles above any others.
The Jungle Express puzzle is a slightly different puzzle to normal, as it has been designed as a 'talkabout number puzzle' ideal for pre-schoolers and children in the Foundation Phase as it promotes discussion about numbers in a natural way giving context to the concept.
As you can see, the picture shows a train with an engine and ten carriages following behind. In each carriage is a different quantity of an animal, dependent upon the number carriage they are in. It's a 30 piece jigsaw; three rows and ten pieces in each row.
Normally The Boy is capable of doing jigsaw puzzles between 30 and 50 pieces, and so I was initially apprehensive of the challenge of this jigsaw, but was happy to review it for the mathematical development available through it. However, it is actually quite a challenging jigsaw because of the way that the carriages have been drawn going up and down hills; they don't join together in a straight forward manner. This in itself is mathematical development because it relies upon The Boy drawing upon problem solving skills; using a picture to solve a problem, trial and error, and logical thinking. (And if you think I've just made up those areas of problem-solving, then I shall happily show you the hand-outs from a Maths course I went on a few years ago).
We've developed our own way of doing the puzzle, in opposition to the normal 'do the edges first' approach; we do the middle row first. This way he can link the carriages together in the correct order, then we do the 'sky' row and then the 'ground' row.
This puzzle of course can be left at just joining the pieces, but it would be a travesty not to take advantage of the opportunities for discussion. There are times when I look desperately for a question to ask about something, and my brain fails me. Orchard Toys recognises that sometimes there are days when there's not enough coffee or chocolate to help, and so on the back of the box they have printed a brilliant guide which gives over fifteen questions to start you off; Can you find the ___? What is the colour of the ____ carriage? Are there more ___ or ___ on the train? and my favourite question: Where do you think the train is going?
One of my favourite parts of any Orchard Toys product is the 'Educational Guide':
But of course, our most favourite part is how much fun they are!
'Jungle Express' is available from Orchard Toys for £9.75
We were sent this product for the purpose of this review, our opinions is honest and unbiased.
With our decision about The Boy's pre-school provision firmly in place, it's now at the forefront of my mind that I need to make sure his language and mathematical development is up to spec for when he starts Reception class in a year's time. Keeping him in private nursery for just a few sessions a week will ensure he is having the social development along with helping him to learn the routine of sitting down and listening, but I can't guarantee that he will receive the same input as he would in a state nursery (where I know the assessments that take place).
The Boy is good at his shapes, he knows the basics of square, rectangle, circle and triangle and has done for quite some time. Thanks to a few iPad apps he's also able to identify diamonds, semi-circles, crescents, hexagon, pentagon and surprisingly an octagon. It might seem excessive but he can recognise them easily and why not teach him the right names for a shape?
And so it was with that in mind that I was happy to receive the Triqo system for him to try out.
Triqo is a collection of fifty plastic shapes which click together. They come in either a triangle or square form which when combined can create a range of other shapes, and the ten different colours are bright and cheerful. Made of a strong and flexible plastic with a tab on each of the sides; these tabs fold and have two poppers on them which click together with one of the other shapes to build up into a three-dimensional shape.
The Boy found it easy enough to click two pieces together (although quite some pressure is needed initially) but did struggle when trying to join them in anything other than a straight line. That ball of triangular pieces in the photo is my handiwork, not his.
However, we played with them for forty-five minutes this morning and he has come back to them several times throughout the day. When Mr. TBaM came in from work he rushed out to show him his cube and 'boicud'. His father looked at him blankly and he tried again, "Cuboid daddy!" So after just one session playing together he's learnt that a cube has square sides and a cuboid is made up of squares and rectangles.
Triqo are made in the Netherlands, and these Scandinavian and Germanic countries get it completely right when it comes to pre-school education. With most children not starting school until the age of six or seven years, they're focus is on learning through play. So of course aside from the educational and mathematical development opportunities, they're great fun for the imagination: houses, pyramids, space rockets, boats!
The Triqo starter pack is available for the very reasonable price of £14.99 from all good toy stores or visit Ark DIY Products.
I was sent this product for the purpose of this review. My opinion is honest and unbiased.
Inspired play from Mummy, Mummy, Mum
Last Friday the theme on #MarchPhotoADay on Instagram was 'red'. I debated his red jumper, a red flower in the garden, blah, blah, blah. All very boring. Then it struck me when I was tidying up the threading and beading we'd been doing. I picked up the red lace and the red cotton reel and had a moment of inspiration.
I took the lace into the living room where The Boy was playing, put it down in a circle and asked him if he could find me anything red. He looked around the room and found one or two things, but needed a little help to see anything that wasn't shouting out to him. Then given a little more prompting he found a plethora of things, including my toes and his! I lined up the iPod ready to take a snap and he stopped me as he wanted his VTech to take one too.
Hopefully, it's obvious which one is whose!
He then ran off to find another coloured lace and we spent the next thirty minutes sorting things into colours.
He had loads of fun and I can't recommend it highly enough as an activity. It's excellent for pre-mathematical development; identifying colours and sorting accordingly so.
Have fun!
