Book Review And Giveaway – Marvelous Makeable Monsters

Marvelous Makeable Monsters -by Sam Haynor

What can a makeable monster do? They motor, inflate, wobble, drool, soar, and one can even do push-ups. The best thing about these monsters is that they’re part experiment, part imagination, and 100% customizable. Author Sam Haynor draws on his experience with the San Francisco Exploratorium, Oakland Toy Lab, GoldieBlox, and designing STEAM curriculum to create projects packed with fun features. With 21 different projects you could setup a lesson plan to suit your classroom, homeschool or home environment. You don’t need to be an educator to be able to achieve or educate your child with these projects and tutorials. I love when crafts become science and play becomes education!

Giveaway

We think this book should be a part of your resource bookshelf. We love it so much that we are giving away 5 copies to 5 lucky Craftgossip.com readers (US address only)

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Entries close on the 25th of October 2018 – Winners will be contacted via e-mail at the close of the giveaway.

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

Have you read?