{Place Value Mats}

Howdy all! Hope you had a wonderful and relaxing Mother's Day doing something that makes you happy. Mine was delightful as always, thanks to my 2 faves and all the ways they make me feel special!

We've been working on place value 'round here, so I made up these reusable wipe-off mats for practice. My sweet girl has a ton of fun with them and grabs them whenever she has a free minute these days. I just call out a number, and she tries to write it correctly. We throw them in our "Out to Eat Bag" , too. I always have the WASHABLE(!) wipe-off markers around because I learned the hard way in my own classroom that the regular dry erase markers DO.NOT.COME.OFF. (eek.)

I made 2 of them...this one to 'thousands' place and another just to 'hundreds' place. Super simple and free.

I used 8.5x11 cardstock for the base, and free hand cut little houses out of scrap patterned paper. I added the words, lines, and doorknobs with a permanent marker, and the 'sun' was made with a paper punch. Then I laminated them with clear contact paper. We use a scrap of fleece for an eraser, and again, the washable dry-erase markers.

(This photo is awful, but you get the idea!)

It's GREAT practice, fun, reusable, portable, and most importantly really gets those place values lined up in the noggin. :) Prior to all of this, of course we've been using manipulatives for a very long time. We started number building a loooong time ago using our Base 10 Bean Sticks to build the number I called out:

Easily made with craft sticks, beans of choice, and Elmer's.  Our 'hundreds' aren't really beans, but a copy of 10 bean sticks.

Now our place value mats are helping a lot as we get more and more advanced. She thinks the houses are cute and anytime we can throw in some imagination to the game, it just makes it that much more beneficial to little brains. 

Hope you try one of these!

Have a great day,

 

{Felt Arctic Playmat}

Okay so we had to add ONE more playmat. I tell you I get addicted! I think it's because when you're using felt you eliminate things like right/wrong sides, and you can twist it pretty much any way you want and it will turn out right. Plus it's inexpensive. Plus you can use your imagination and then make it happen!

So...I mentioned while playing with animals that wouldn't it be nice to have a winter-type landscape to play with the polar bears and penguins? My sweet girl gave me the go-ahead and our minds started churning out ideas. How about a snow hill? Definitely an ocean area. Maybe an igloo? Ice chunks?

Here's how it came out:

These projects are great because it's really up to you how you make them, so they will always be different and unique! I basically roughly gathered a rectangle of white for the "snow hill", then machine stitched it down almost all the way before stuffing it. 

I laid out the blue diagonally, free-handed some wavy sides, and stitched it down. I added a few wavy stitch lines as waves, then rough cut a couple of icebergs and stitched them over top.

For the snow cave, I cut a too-big rectangle and basically just crumpled and gathered it around the sides until I was happy with it. I pinned it in place and machine-stitched that, too. 

I added a second layer of white felt to the bottom to make it heavier. I have done that with my Jungle Playmat also. I made one extra iceberg that I didn't stitch down...but I used a triple layer of felt for that. 

Maybe that piece is just floating, so animals can cross from one side to the next?  :)

I'm very happy with how it turned out, and the ease and low cost of completing these. Again, I wouldn't make one out of felt for baby use because felt just isn't conducive to washing. But for a little bigger child I think they're great...and portable!

Here's one other mat that I made several months ago...but it was really just for fun and not for my own daughter. It's more for little ones, maybe? I gave this one away, but I love the portability of making them flat. 

Thanks for looking at one more playmat. :)
You can see my jungle playmat  HERE and HERE.

Take care,

I'm linking up to these parties:

 

{Jungle Playmat Update}

You may remember the Felt Jungle Playmat I made a while back...an item that has been played with and played with again by my almost 7 year old. She loves to create scenarios with her Schleich animals, and over the last few months she has accumulated several new ones. We decided this week that the original was just getting too crowded, so lastnight I added on.

Here is the original:

You can read more about it here.  I am very happy with it, but the animals had completely taken it over!

I had several large pieces of green felt leftover, so I decided just to add on to the existing mat. 

Here's the new addition:

I added a stream, a field of grasses, and an ostrich nest with eggs (since she recently bought a mother and baby ostrich). I also just left open space for grazing, playing...whatever the imagination can brew up.;)

 For the nest, I randomly cut a rectangle and just started rolling the sides into a circle before hand stitching it down.

 For the grasses, I have found it's easiest to take one longer strip of green, snip inward on both sides to make the grass, then sew it down the middle. You can fluff them with your fingers. Here are the rhinos enjoying grass. :)

 And here's the stream. I was using small squares of blue felt, so I pieced this one together. She has a few real rocks that she usually adds to it, so maybe she'll cover that up.

So I took the new piece and sewed it to one end of the original. I wanted to work with the felt I had and not buy more, so this worked best. She rolls this up when she's not using it, so it's easy to put away when she needs to. I wouldn't use felt with a baby (not conducive to washing!!), but for my almost 7 yr old, it's great.

Here's the final version...maybe. Unless we add more someday. :)

The top half is the original, and the bottom is the new piece.

Whatcha think? I'm starting on another one this evening, for a different ecosystem of animals.

I'll post it, along with yet another version, very soon!
(Can you tell I get addicted to one project and make several??!)

Thanks for stopping by!

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