High Maintenance Mom

One of B's favorite days at school was 100's day (on the 100th day of school). B loved counting the school days in his classroom and was very excited for the celebration. In addition to counting out 100 snacks, decorating a crown with 100 stickers, and stringing 100 pieces of cereal into a necklace, the kids also got to search for 100 Hershey kisses. Each of the kisses had a sticker on the bottom with a number written on it. The kids had to match the numbers on the candy to numbers on a large paper Hershey kiss. It was fun to watch the smiling kids try to match the numbers and I wanted to see if N would enjoy a similar activity at home...

I bought a pack of circular Labels (dots) and wrote numbers on them in a random order from one to 15. Then I took a piece of blank paper and wrote the numbers 1 to 15 on it. I gave the stickers and paper to N as his 'homework.' He often asks for homework when B does his so he was very excited to have something 'real.' The first thing he did was talk loudly about how hard it was and how long it was going to take him. Then we sat down together and started picking up the stickers one by one. When he had finished, I gave him pens to finish decorating the page. He made a 'maze' of the numbers and was very proud.

We have played with the dot stickers together three times over the past three months. The second time, I used the letters from his name. I wrote out his name in all capitals on the stickers and paper. He was really excited to see his name in the stickers. The third time, I did a pattern of numbers from 1 to 20 so that each of the four lines had five stickers in them. Again he enjoyed decorating his finished homework and hanging it up.

There is something fun about matching the stickers and I can imagine using this technique to create other fun pictures with letters and numbers he likes. I am also planning to make a few connect-the-dots for him. Older kids, who know their letters and numbers, would probably also enjoy putting the stickers in order on a blank sheet of paper. Now that I have a lot of dots, I'm sure we will find lots of fun ways to use them.