Beads

I've been looking for large wooden beads for strining for quite some time and finally found them at A.C. Moore. A bag of about 20 to 25 wooden beads in bright colors and varying sizes was just waiting for me to pluck them from the peg and take them home, which I did, along with a package of plastic lanyard. I've since found a multitude of educational uses for them, including:

• stringing beads for fine motor skills
• sorting beads for color discrimination
• sorting beads for size discrimination
• counting the beads once they are strung, by holding the lanyard sideways in two hands and letting her slide them to the left, one by one, like an abacus.
• later on, pattern recognition with both size and color

And the best part is that it is an activity that Angie loves. She'll sit for 10 or 15 minutes stringing beads and counting, much longer than for any other single activity we've tried!