One of the things I love about working with young children is their natural curiosity and eagerness to learn and explore new things. It's what makes creating teacher made materials fun and rewarding. Watching children light up when you bring in something new that you have constructed for them to play with validates why we do what we do. Self made materials can be complex in their creation or simple. You can use odds and end pieces or specific items that have been saving. You can spend alot of time creating materials or just a little bit of time. That is the beauty of it, there are no constraints or limits to what you can create for your children to explore.
The following activity was created with some dial rods that I purchased at a creative reuse place for teachers and left over beads in my classroom. The number plaques were designed on the computer then taped onto the rods.
The children were able to recognize the numbers on each rod and then place the appropriate number of beads with that number. The activity did not take long to create, and the learning and exploration that took place while engaging with the materials was fantastic! I will try to get some photos with the children actually using the materials posted.
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