Squishy Number Learning

What You Need: 

• Zippered sandwich bag
• Hair gel
• Blue or green food coloring
• 10 pony beads or other small objects (un-popped popcorn, dry beans, etc)
• Blue masking tape

What You Do:

1. While you hold the zippered bag, have your young learner squeeze hair gel into the bag. Don’t worry about filling it or air bubbles, but add enough gel to create a solid layer.
2. Ask your child to hold the bag while you add a drop of food coloring.
3. Seal the bag and let your child squish and squeeze until the gel and dye are mixed.
4. Help your child count out 10 pony beads (popcorn kernels or dried beans). Unzip the bag and drop them into the gel. Reseal the bag.
5. Encourage your child to squish the gel and beads around inside the bag. After they've done this for a while, use a strip of tape down the middle to divide the bag.
6. Hang the bag from a window pane using another strip of tape.
7. Ask your child to divide the beads so there are five on each side of the tape. Have your child do this several times throughout the day.

Expand on this by adding another piece of tape to divide the bag into quarters. Can your child divide the beads into four equal groups? Or, you can add 10 beads of a second color. Challenge your learner to divide the beads so that there are five of each color on either side of the tape. There are many variations to this fun sensory activity to keep yoru child engaged in counting and working with numbers!