It is soon Mardi Gras, and we thought this is a good time to offer some exercises with clowns: tracing, finding differences, seriality, and left-right exercises. These exercises train attention, hand-eye coordination, visual and spatial perception – very important skills for reading, writing, and calculating.
Today’s freebie consists of some math puzzles with calculations up to 10. Children have to cut out the pictures and glue them onto the correct calculation. This trains not only math skills, but also fine motor skills, attention, visual, and spatial perception.
The app “Learning to draw is fun” will teach your child to draw easily 24 different pictures like a butterfly, a snowman, a flower, a birthday cake… Each drawing is split into 4 easy steps that your child can easily reproduce below the drawing templates. When the drawing is finished, your child can color it. All the drawings made by your child are saved and can be printed (needs an AirPrint compatible printer).
The app is available for iPad and costs $1.99 in the App Store.
With a sheet of paper, a grid, and a template, children learn to draw 32 drawings on iPad, 16 on the iPhone in the Lite version, more than 120 (60 on iPhone) in the full version. Copying a drawing is not as easy as you think; it takes a lot of concentration and attention. While copying the templates, children will exercise their observation and logic skills with the game modes “copy”, “move”, and “symmetries”, with 2 levels of difficulty (only one for iPhone) in the Lite version.
Symmetry Exercises for Kids Lite is for iPhone and iPad. Available on the App Store. The full version costs $1.99.
Now and then, we want to give you a survey of interesting articles gathered from the net on dyslexia and dyscalculia.
Spielberg on Dyslexia: “You are not alone.”
Despite being bullied in school, Steven Spielberg didn’t let dyslexia prevent him from becoming a Hollywood legend. Read his encouraging words for people with learning disabilities. READ ON
Busted: Five myths and truths about dyslexia
Think all dyslexics write their letter reversed? Or that they never learn to read, or have less than average intelligence? Wrong. Husband-and-wife-team Bennett and Sally Shaywitz are pediatric neurologists at Yale University who have dedicated their lives to understanding and advancing treatment for dyslexia. READ ON
Tracing is a very good exercise for dyslexic and dyscalculic children. Tracing trains attention, fine motor skills and visual and spatial perception. Today’s freebie offers a mini-book with different abstract forms to trace and to draw. First, children have to trace the form, then they have to draw the form into the box.
Today’s freebie contains a Christmas matching game. There are twice twenty cards which have to be matched. But take care and look carefully: The cards seem to be the same, but every card is different.
This trains visual and spatial perception – important skills for reading, writing, and calculating.
Honeycomb puzzles are a great means to train attention and perception. Today, three honeycomb puzzles with different themes are offered. There are two versions of each puzzle. In the second version, the honeycomb that is in the middle, is colored gray. This might be a help, especially for younger children. It is best to print the puzzles on thicker paper. You might also want to laminate them.
Have fun puzzling!
