Birthdays Can Be Treacherous
We're mid-birthday-month right now. Naomi and I have birthdays at the beginning of October, which involved nearly a week's worth of festivities this year, and Leviah's is at the end of the month. Birthdays can mean an onslaught of plastic nonsense that clutters are hallways and bedroom floors. Sure, they initially have a special place in the closet but the '1 toy at a time' rule is just so darn hard to enforce! We're trying to think of some new approaches, this one is particularly intriguing...
Anyway, after purging a ton of toys, games and clothing before the birthdays (as is a yearly tradition) the last thing I wanted to do was restock on unnecessities. So, we went basic.
Mancala (she squealed with delight)
Origami Paper
Yarn
and my personal favorite, a Fraction Circle. This thing is awesome! She put off playing with until I forced her last week. I knew when she opened it she's too old for me to dupe her into thinking learning toys are good gifts. But, she thanked us and quickly opened another.
When I finally did encourage her to pull it out to see what it was all about we all fell in love! I'll let the pictures give a better idea:
there's an empty circle frame to which you add from the many fraction pieces that came with.
you can see how having 12/12's is the same as 1 whole circle, like like 2/2's.
Plus you can mix and match fractions.
Everyone took a turn coming up with things, comparing 2/8's to 1/4, etc.
Which piece of pumpkin pie do you want?
Anyway--this inexpensive manipulative (and everything in Sima Design's shop) does make a great gift!
