Homeschool Work & Ideas for Junior and Senior Infants

Rhythm Counting: Use actions such as clapping,pat-a-cake, tapping, hopping and jumping to set the pace for counting up and down to 10 or 20. Choose different numbers to stop and start at, for example, 'We're going to start at 4 and count up to 10', or 'We're going to start at 10 and count down to 2'. Simon Says: Simon Says is a great way to promote listening and comprehension skills as well as to practice number work and directional language. Give instructions like: 5 jumping Jacks, clap your hands 3 times, hop on one foot 4 times. Also include language such as over, under, beside, in, on and between in your instructions. Find and Press: Using a calculator (phone calculator is fine) call out a number and get your child to identify and press this number. To encourage concentration and listening you could call out two or three numbers and your child must press them in the same order. You could also try simple addition sums such as 'Press the answer to two and one more makes'. Make A One-More-Than Set: Give children about 5 items which could be used as counters (any 5 of the same item, such as spoons, pieces of pasta, Lego bricks, whatever). You make a set with a maximum of 3 of these items in it and together with your child count how many items are in that set. Then, using the counters they have, ask your child to make a set that has one-more-than the set you made. For example, if you made a set of three, they would have to make a set of four. Encourage them to count aloud as they do this. Cover That Number: You will need a dice. You will also need two sets of 10 counters (one set of 10 pasta pieces and one set of 10 Lego bricks for example). Make a simple game board using a sheet of paper. Around the edges of the page draw boxes so that it becomes a rectangular track. In each square write one number (numbers 1 - 6 only). They do not need to be in order. On your turn roll the dice, count the dots and cover a square with that number using one of your markers. The first person to cover 10 squares is the winner. Board Games: If you have board games like Snakes and Ladders or Ludo they are a great way to promote counting and concentration as well as turn taking. Children have to not only count the number of dots on the dice but also count on this number of spaces on the board. Playdough: Playdough can be used to help children with number formation. There are some numbers that children frequently write backwards, like 2 and 3. Using playdough to form the numbers is a fun way to practice making them the right way around. You can make a set of between 1 and 5 objects, ask your child to count the number of objects in the set and make the answer using playdough. If you don't have any playdough at home there are lots of recipes online for making it which would be a fun activity to do with your child! Rice Krispie Buns: Baking is a great opportunity to practice a bit of counting. Making something like Rice Krispie buns your child can count by counting out the bun cases, counting how many squares of chocolate go in, counting how many spoons of Rice Krispies are added and so on. It is also a good way to use the language beside, in, on, into, etc.