A Rug, Some Numbers and Some Learning

I recently discovered that Annika is a kinesthetic learner. I always thought she was a visual learner but it turns out she is more of a  kinesthetic and an audio learner.  Luckily, not too long ago we did a hopscotch runner out of Flor tiles. I chose to do the numbers in felt instead of painting them on.  I had a feeling that it would be helpful for the kids to learn numbers if they actually got to hold them, feel them, trace them and jump on them!

Thank God I went with that choice because it has been a lot of fun playing with the numbers and hopscotch. I'm not having to drill her or do a workbook of any kind. All we do is play and she is pretty quickly learning the numbers by sight. She can count and gets simple adding but she hasn't quite gotten that this: 4 is a four.

Hopscotch isn't as useful right now. Instead what we do is we take turns calling out a number and the other person has to jump on it.  When I call them out I only call what she knows and gradually add one more when I think she's gotten the groove of the first ones. So I'll call out 1-2-2-3-4-1-3 and she is jumping on each square. Then I add 5. So I go 5-3-1-5 etc. This suits her learning style perfectly.  I could not have worked out much better than this!