At OMO, we believe that every stain represents an important experience - mud stains are the stamp of adventure, grass stains are the sign of exploration and fruit stains are the aftermath of discovery. Encourage your kids to get messy with our fun activities for happy, healthy, confident kids. We'll be there to sort out the dirty clothes afterwards.
Sparkly Sevens Treasure Hunt
Challenge your child to find seven items in the glitter slime. It’s sparkly, silly, and a great way to get them counting, adding and even multiplying.
What you’ll need:
What to do:
Mix the items you have gathered into the glitter slime so that they are buried in it. Challenge your child to find each group of items, counting them as they find them. They should keep like items together as they find them – explain that these items are called a set. When your child has found all the items you hid, ask them to tell you how many sets of seven things there are. Now count all the items with them. Help them to count two times seven to get fourteen, and three times seven to get 21, and so on. They don’t need to remember the times tables at this point in their development, but the activity helps them to understand the concepts of multiplication later.
Alternative Materials:
Change it up:
Make it easy: This activity can be done with only two or three of each item and only two or three types of item. You can focus on addition rather than multiplication.
Make it a challenge: Teach your child about overlapping sets by having some of the wooden blocks be blue, for example. Help them to see that they can count those items as part of the set pf seven wooden blocks and also as part of the set of blue things.
Play with friends: Friends can join each find one set of things and then work together to count all the sets.
Indoor play: Lay down an old sheet or newspaper for your child to work on if you’re doing this activity indoors.
Developmental areas:
Fine motor skills
Concepts – sorting
Concepts – counting
Concepts – addition and multiplication
Concepts - sets
Values:
Self-confidence; curiosity.