Sweet Pea is 31 months old.
From: I found this idea on RockerMom’s Spinner’s End Nursery School.
Material:
- Pattern Matching Music Notes Worksheet (.pdf file requires Foxit or Adobe Acrobat). RockerMom also posted her own worksheet, but I made my own before I found hers.
- Mini Erasers in the shape of music notes. (I found mine at the dollar store, but you could also print out an extra worksheet and just cut them out of the paper.)
- Tray (optional, but helpful for containing stray erasers).
Procedure:
- Collect all your materials and sit next to your tot.
- Pick on of the pattern matching strips and put it in front of you. Set the others to the side.
- Point to the first music symbol outline on the left of the pattern matching strip. Say something like, “This is a treble clef. I need to find an eraser that matches this outline.”
- Move your hand slowly over the erasers until you find the one want. Say, “Oh here it is! Here is the treble clef.” Pick it up and place it on top of the appropriate outline.
- Repeat for the next couple of outlines and gradually let your tot take over.
Observations: Despite being initially fascinated with the little erasers, Sweet Pea liked, but did not love this activity and only played with it for 5-10 minutes before moving on to something else. She has chosen to work on this a couple more times, but she never sticks with it for very long.
Sweet Pea also made several errors when she chose which erasers to put on the worksheets and I don’t know if I did the right thing by trying to get her to correct her mistakes. I may have discouraged her a little bit. It’s so hard to know what to say. In any case, I think it would have gone better if my worksheets were in color. I might color them in and try it again that way.
She would also get ahead of herself and pick up erasers that went farther down the line. She didn’t always go from left to right lik I would have preferred, but I didn’t say anything about that to her.
Notes from the Trenches: The mini-erasers could easily be a choking hazard.
Rating: 3 Stars * (Easy, Independent, Frugal – if you just print and cut out the musical symbols instead of using erasers.)
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We introduced the patters for the first time with mini erasers as well, but we just went with colors. I think that yours might be more difficult, because there are several new concepts at once or maybe Sweet Pea is simply not ready yet. I noticed that many concepts, such as patterns or puzzles really fell in place closer to 3 for my daughter.
This is a great activity! One of these days, I need to go to the Dollar Store all by myself so I can find these kind of items! 🙂
PS – Love your header!!!
I love this activity!!
We’ve tried similar activities, and Maddie’s always REALLY mediocre about them. I found some cute smiley face magnets at the Dollar Tree and made pattern strips with smiley face stickers. That held her attention a little longer, but it still isn’t something she independently chooses. Maybe coloring in the pictures WOULD help as a cue.