My students always loved geoboards and I figured it would be fun to DIY some for us to use at home. Olive loves playing with rubber bands and learning about shapes so I thought it would be fun for her to practice them in a new way. I saw some ideas on-line and knew I could make it happen inexpensively. So I texted my dad to see if he could get me two wood slices. He came through and the rest of the project was really easy. If you don't have wood slices, you could buy those finished wood circles or squares from a craft store.
You'll need these supplies to make 2 geoboards:
two wood slices
a bag of multi-colored rubber bands
2 bags of 14 long nails
hammer
I plotted out the locations of the nails to see how many I could get around the outside edge and then moved to the inside. I hammered them all in and then went back to make sure they were all about halfway in the wood. She has played with these geoboards ever since November. They're fun and easy for her to do independently.
Learning activities:
color sort rubber bands
color sort rubber bands
shape practice - let's make a square, straight line, diamonds, etc.
count how many nails are inside this shape
count how many triangles we can make
counting rubber bands as we add them or take them off the board
I gave Olive several ideas of how to play with the geoboards
and then she came up with her own. Kid's have such fun imaginations!
Her favorite game is JAIL. I blame Sheriff Callie and the fact that her Papaw is a policeman. She just loves to arrest all of her characters and put them in rubber band jail :)
Can you think of any other learning activities we could do with these geoboards??
I'm all ears :)
Genius idea!!! My students always loved geoboards as well and this would be so much fun!! I'm totally making this for my kiddos. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! very fun!!
ReplyDeleteLOVE IT!!! And they're so pretty too! I did something similar with Henry several years ago. Our boards were rectangular and he put the rubber bands on to make a marble maze. It was fun because he could make dead ends, to make it really difficult, or make it really simple ones. He had a lot of fun with that :)
ReplyDeleteI love this and that she used her characters to add a bit of fun! I want to have Connor create a string art board so maybe I'll do that when we've been stunk indoors for too long.
ReplyDeleteOh this is too cute and Olive playing jail is too funny. Oh that picture has me laughing. Do you feel like the nails are in there pretty well? I would worried my wild child would pull them out. It looks really neat and lots of fun.
ReplyDeleteThese are SO much fun! I know there has to be more ways to play with them but I am drawing blanks right now. Probably because it's almost Friday :P.
ReplyDeleteThis is adorable! I remember playing with these as a kid!
ReplyDeleteWhat a neat activity!! They would be cool as decorations too!
ReplyDelete