15 Activities with an Alphabet Puzzle Mat

When the girls were 5 months old, they received a Foam Letter & Number Floor Mat Puzzle.  It was useful to keep them from getting hurt as they learned to crawl, stand, and walk, but they soon discovered that they could take the pieces out (and throw them / put them in their mouth), so it was retired shortly after their 1st birthday.  Recently we re-discovered this puzzle mat when cleaning out a storage closet.  I was debating whether to even keep it, but L and E (35 months) have been asking for their Alphabet Mat every single day this week.  Accordingly, I've been making up tons of new activities with this toy, and wanted to share some of these ideas...

Valentines Counting Game

Here's a standard math/counting game with a bit of a Valentine's Day twist to it.  I set up a laminated hundreds-board, a spinner from a different board game, and a jar with exactly 100 heart-shaped mini-erasers.  The way you play the game is to take turns spinning the spinner (you could also use dice) and to count out that number of hearts and place them on the board until it is completely covered.

It's a good way of reinforcing identification of digits and introducing higher-order numbers to 100.  Older kids can use this type of activity to work on addition as well as other skills (like discussing odd-even numbers and what happens when you add an odd number to an even number, etc,,,).  The girls played the 'game' for a couple turns, and the E just wanted to put all the hearts down on the board without using the spinner.  She did a great job and was really proud when the board was completely covered.  She removed the hearts in random order and I called out the name of each number she was uncovering, which she liked.

Then I used dry-erase crayons to make a pattern on the other side of the laminated hundreds board (which has blank squares, and L placed the hearts on them to make a pretty design:

This was such an easy activity to set up, and the girls loved using the hearts instead of their usual manipulatives.

Homemade Math Manipulatives - Sorting Hearts

Here are some homemade math manipulatives I created for L and E (30 months old).

I've decided to use the RightStart Math curriculum for the girls.  It is based on hands-on learning using lots of math manipulatives (and an abacus, too!).  I'm really excited about this curriculum, but I'll talk more about that in another post.  Level A is supposed to be for Kindergarteners, but we've already done the first 3 lessons and the girls are really enjoying it and are grasping the concepts just fine.  A big part of the curriculum is to condition the brain to identify groups of objects instead of always count them.  I wanted to create some of my own manipulatives to help reinforce grouping and sorting concepts.

These little hearts are made from Crayola Model Magic.  It's an air-dry 'clay' that has the feel of foam when it is dry (and doesn't break if dropped).  We used the same technique to make Christmas ornaments a couple months ago.  I rolled the modeling compound out with a rolling pin and punched out shapes with a cookie cutter.  Then I pressed different numbers of 'gems' into each one:

Initially I wanted to use different shape and size cookie cutters, but in the end decided on a heart theme for Valentines Day.  I brushed a mixture of glue and water (equal parts of each) over them after they dried to make these more resistant to fingerprints.

The girls didn't help me with this project, but they had a good time making their own creations out of the modeling material:

These girls always impress me with their creativity (I think their project turned out cuter than mine)!

Back to the Math Hearts.  There's no correct way to play this 'game', but here are a couple things we did.  First I'd show them one heart and ask them how many jewels it has (without counting).  The girls are really good at identifying groups of 1-3, but still working on groups of 4 and 5 (with the RightStart Math program, everything is based on 5s and 10s, which is how Asians are taught to do math, so once we can identify groups up to 5, we can do all types of operations fairly quickly).  Then I put all the hearts down on the table and we sorted them in different ways - by heart color, by gem color, by gem shape, and by the number of gems.  After sorting them into groups I asked questions about which group had the most and least, how many are left if we take one away, etc..  In future play, we'll do some ordering and sequencing activities with these manipulative as well.  They are so versatile!  I have a feeling that the girls (especially E) will want to pretend they are cookies as well and feed them to their stuffed animals - which is fun too!