Developing Early Math Skill: Stack Them Up!

Mamas attempt to develop Alula's early math skill continues. After two days attempts of introducing shapes, today we did something different.

Our activities today is about Alula's colourful stacking cups. No specific goals today, just having fun and explore what the stacking cups can do.

Game 1: Cupsception

In the first game, I put all the stacking ups on the mat. While putting them one by one, I told Alula the colour of each cup. "The biggest cup is blue. And this is red. Purple. Yellow.." and etc. Lulu paid attention until Mama finished  putting all the cups on the mat.

After that I gave her example how to insert a smaller cup into a bigger cup. "Look Baby, we can do something like this..". I inserted the smallest cup into the bigger one, then insert them into another bigger cups and so on.

Feeling curious and interested, Lulu tried her way to insert the cups. She took one cup and tried to insert it into a smaller cup. Of course it couldn't get through. "You can't insert bigger cup into a smaller one, Lu. It should be the other way around." Then Mama guided her by giving her a bigger cup to be inserted.

Viola! She made it, inserting a yellow cup into an orange cup. As usual, every time she succeeded to do a task, we would clap hands together. She giggles happily. Feeling accomplished, she tried another one, and another.. Well done, Lulu!

Game 2: Stack Them Up

After being able to insert the cups, we tried another game: stack the cups into a tower. The rule is just the opposite from the earlier game. If previously we started from the smaller cups to insert, in this game we started with the biggest cup.

For a start, we should put the biggest cup upside down. Then find the second biggest cup, stack it on top of the biggest cup. Go on and on until you have the smallest cup stacked at the very top. As usual, Mama gave Lulu the direction how to stack the cups. I stacked three cups then she resume the rest of the cups.

Did it go smoothly? Nope, hahaha.. It seems that Lulu lost interest in the middle of the way. She only managed to stack two cups. At the end, we were only being able to stack half of the cups available. Maybe it was hard for Lulu to find a precise size of cup to stack after each one. If you missed one size, it would be impossible to stack properly. No worries, Lu. Let's try again later.

Lesson from game 1 and game 2:

• Improve hands and eyes coordination: the ability to take sensory input from the eyes and translate it to motions with the hands in order to navigate the world.
• Practicing pincer grasp when stacking the cups, giving more control than grabbing with their palm.
• Fine motor skill
• Improving cognitive development by practicing problem solving.
• Visual and spatial perception

Game 3: Cups Music

What else did we do with the cups? Well, this is just for fun. Take two cups and bang them each other. You can create any rhythm you want. In this game Lulu was so excited. She was experimenting rhythm with different size and colours of cups.