Snack Math

 

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Summer is winding to a close and I’m sneaking in a few final math games before the start of (!) Kindergarten. Today Travis did a quick math review  at snack time. Ideal foods for this game are small snacks your child eats a lot of: Annie’s bunny grahams, cereal pieces, pretzel sticks, etc. We played with Earth Balance vegan cheddar squares!

Write out the numbers 1 through 10 on post-its or index cards. Before eating, Travis had to place the correct number of cheddar squares on each post-it.

I had him start with 10 knowing that working up to larger numbers would be more daunting. Instead, it got easier as he went along.

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Unexpectedly, he loved the game! He tried to make each pile into vertical stacks, and thought it was hilarious when they toppled over.

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This was a great way to keep a math lesson light.

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He also thought it was hilarious to eat any broken cheddar squares he found, a quick lesson on fractions and halves even if he didn’t know it!

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And then at the end, he got to knock down all the towers and gobble them up.

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Banana Messages

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Here’s an adorable way to leave a message for your kids – and to teach them a tiny science lesson in the process!

Use a toothpick to score a message (whether words or a picture) into the peel of a banana. Thanks to the way this bruises the banana peel, your message will darken over time –  the longer it sits, the more visible it will be!

Note that you barely need to puncture the peel at all. The first time, I figured I needed to etch all the way down to the banana flesh, but this turned brown almost instantly.

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A more subtle, gentle scoring of the peel reveals itself slowly.

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Regardless, Travis was thrilled when I told him his banana had a secret message for him. He was so surprised!

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He then needed to try his own hand at it of course. These would be fun for a kid to put together and slip into mom or dad’s lunch for work!

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