Around the House

With Gabe in school, Lily and I have been trying out some new activities around the house. I looked into buying a tactile table - but they're SO expensive and take up a fair amount of space. So instead, we improvised...

Large, flat Rubbermaid ($7) container works perfectly. I actually really like that it is low to the ground and provides a tighter seal than the Lakeshore Tactile Table would.

Lily will spend a ton of time playing in here. I keep other tupperware containers full of different things to put in the 'table.' Pictured is noodles - very inexpensive to do, just stock up when your grocery store does a 10 for $10 sale. This is 5 one pound boxes. We also do dried beans, water, rice, shaving cream, Jell-O and Instant Sno (big hit!!!). You could just use plastic cups for scooping/playing, but I bought a few extra measuring cup sets at Wal-mart (for $.89 a piece) to keep in there. Gabe is starting to explore fractions a little bit, and this was a great way to help include him in the activity when he's home from school. We've also put boats, sand toys and plastic cars in.

Lily is great at counting, but not so great at number recognition. I bought some extra clothes pins and just wrote number on strips of paper.

Actual numbers are for Lily, the words are for Gabe.

Lil' Mama has to match the clothes pins to the number on the card. She LOVES this. It's helping with number recognition, patience, and hand dexterity. She also likes sorting the number strips by color.

I love this activity for Gabe, too. He is really into addition and subtraction right now - so this is a perfect visual aid.