Learning with Lids

Around our house, we are just in love with these squeezy food packets.

They come in so many flavors, they are low mess, and I don't have to worry about glass breaking or packing a spoon. 

Oh, and the lids provide some super awesome learning experiences!

I started out by saving the lids, cleaning them, and then tossing them into my junk drawer once G was finished eating.

Once we had a good stash, M and I sat down to explore (and of course, G wanted to investigate, too!).

Patterns

Start out by doing AB patterns (like purple-red-purple-red) and then progress onto more challenging ones (such as ABBA or ABCABC).

I always give M a couple to get her started and then have her finish.

Graphing

In preschool, M's class has been digging deep into the world of bar graphs.

To piggyback on that, we made our own homemade bar graph by stacking the lids into columns.  Using words like "more than" and "less than" turned it into a great math lesson!

Number Sense

M loved having them sorted by color so she decided to count them up.  

Then we worked together to make simple addition and subtraction sentences!

So much fun and M was excited to tell me that we were recycling the lids, instead of just throwing them away.  Win-win!  

Don't have squeezy foods?  You could always use colored paper clips, cereal (like Trix or Fruit Loops) or even buttons.

Written by Jill