I have to tell yall about this amazing interactive board I just put together for my 3 year old and 6 year old! Yes, they can both use it!
As an Experience Early Learning (EEL) Blogger, I receive the EEL Preschool Curriculum in exchange for my honest opinions and authentic stories about our experiences using the curriculum. All opinions and thoughts are completely my own.
Counting Garden Set Up
Each month Experience Early Learning sends us a monthly interactive board, and this month we received the Counting Garden. The Counting Garden came with beautiful images on cardstock of a beehive, bees, number tracing cards, number key cards, and of course flowers with numbers on them. With some help from my trusty laminator, scissors, magnetic tape, and book rings, I was able to whip up this interactive board during my son’s naptime!
Experience Early Learning suggested using popsicle sticks for all these bees and making envelope folders for the flower number cards, but I found my magnetic tape would better suit our needs. I placed the magnetic tape on the flower number cards, bees, beehive and Counting Garden title display. I used 2 book ring holders for the finger tracing cards and the key ring bee number cards.
Counting Garden for Preschoolers
This counting garden is perfect for preschoolers! It is all about one-to-one correspondence and simple counting. I can place whatever flower number card I want on the board and then my son can place the correct bees next to that number. He can see which number has more and less and we can play comparison games as well. I might use my key chain number card to show him a number and tell him to find the flower card and the right number of bees and place them on the magnet board. My board is not big enough for all 10 flower number cards, but that’s okay by me! I think it would be a little too busy and harder to focus if I had all 10 number cards with all their bees!
Counting Garden for Kinder and 1st Graders
I even thought of a few games my 1st grader can do with our Counting Garden interactive board!
She is working on becoming fluent with her math facts and this interactive board is perfect for addition all the way to 19! She can draw 2 flower number cards and then place the bees totaling them. She can then write her number sentence in her math notebook, or I could ask her to subtract some from that number. She can use the number tracing card for extra practice for the numbers she likes to write backwards, like 7 and 2.
We could even work out some word problems! These pictures provide opportunities for lots of stories to be made and problems to be figured! And she is so into telling me stories so double win on that!
If you can not tell, I am so excited to see how my kids interact with this board. Oh and to top it all off, all the supplies (except the beehive and title card) fit into a zipper pouch! Easy storage is always a bonus in my book!
How would you use this board? I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions!
