Preschool Fun - Counting and Day of the Week/Months

This year as my oldest gets ready to go off to 1st grade my 4 year old has just been itching for the chance to go to school. So I thought I would spend this year getting him ready for Kindergarten by making some fun hands on learning tools for him and his 2 year old brother to play with and learn from. Be on the lookout for more of this in the months to come!

Today I wanted to share the counting sticks, counting wheel and day of the week/month wheel I created. Let's start with the counting sticks - I got the idea from craftprojectideas.com, and modified it a little to my liking. Instead of gluing beads onto the stick I decided to leave them blank so my kids could use different objects to count with. This week they are using dried beans and lining them up on the stick as they count.

Next, let's look at the super hero counting wheels my boys are sure to flip over. I found the printables for these at Little Piles Everywhere (click on the link for TONS of printables in all different themes). After printing them off, I glued the circles on to card stock to make it more sturdy and attached the stars to clothespins so that little hands could work on small motor skills while counting.

And this last wheel was quickly made by hand so it is nothing colorful or fancy but it will be a hands on way to learn the days of the week and the months. I used a disposable coaster, mod podged some card stock with the days of the week to it and wrote yesterday, today, and tomorrow on clothespins. On the back I did the same with the months. Two wheels in one!