Colourful cubes – so many ways to learn!

As a teacher, I used these colourful multilink cubes many times in the classroom to help the children learn different mathematical skills. However, it was not until I put them out at my Little Learners classes this week that I realised the huge number of possibilities for learning they could create for pre-schoolers too!

Colourful Cubes Learning for Babies

The babies loved the bright colours of the cubes. They were a great size for them to grab and hold. They enjoyed passing them to adults and exchanging, also passing them from one hand to another. They loved to put them in to the pot and tip them out again, listening to the noise they make.

Colourful Cubes Learning for Toddlers

The toddlers enjoyed pushing the colourful cubes together which helped them learn new skills – for this is actually quite tricky and builds perseverence as well as developing their fine-motor skills. They made tall towers, like Lionel our soldier mark who makes straight lines. We talked about the towers using mathematical language. ‘Which tower is the tallest?’ Is the blue tower shorter?’

They also loved to sort the colours and began to have a go at counting. ‘How many purple cubes are there in your tower?’ The language possibilities are endless and the children get to hear and experience a wide range of vocabulary relating to their play.

Colourful Cubes Learning for Pre-schoolers

The pre-school children could practise counting the cubes using 1-1 correspondence (giving each cube 1 number as they point at them in turn). They knew that the last number was the total number of cubes. They practised finding that number written on the sheet. They could talk about more/less cubes in different towers. They enjoyed naming the colours and sorting the cubes by colour. They made patterns with the colours and could copy the pattern pictures to create repeating patterns.

The cubes even have different shapes on the sides so they can also talk about and name simple shapes. Not only can they build towers with the cubes, they can also stick cubes on the sides to create 3D shapes or other imaginative creations!!

Little Learners and numbers

People often think our classes are just about early literacy skills, however mathematical skills have a big part to play in all our sessions too. Not only do we learn to physically form the numbers, drawing and making the shapes of the numbers in many different ways, we also learn about counting, shapes and patterns. There are always opportunities to count whilst playing. The children don’t even know they are learning!

Who knew that just playing with some cubes could be so educational?!

If you’d like to come and try some of the activities shown here and loads more, come along to one of my classes or events across East Sussex. www.littlelearnersuk.com/franchise/lewes-brighton

I also run sessions in schools. If you are a teacher and think your school would be interested to find out more about our innovative, award-winning mark-making programme, please get in touch >>> kate@littlelearnersuk.com

We LOVE learning through play! I know there are many more ways to play and learn with this amazing resource. Let me know your ideas in the comments below.

Kate x