I've really been slacking lately in the whole blogging and reviewing department... I'm making it part of my goal to get back on track, as I keep receiving lots of amazing products and books! So, to start over...
Each month, the Guidecraft Educators share our honest feelings
about a Guidecraft product(s) and how these products would fare in an
early childhood classroom. This month's selection is from Guidecraft's Manipulatives line -
Barnyard Activity Boxes.
From Guidecraft: Can you count them all? One red horse, two orange cows, three yellow
sheep, four green pigs, five blue geese, and six purple chickens. But
don’t forget the six
barns as well. Our 28-piece set features six wooden barns and their
corresponding farm animals to help with counting, sequencing,
shape-sorting, color-matching and more!
Each barn has the animal screened on one side; a shape-cutout on the
opposite side; a barn door with child-friendly elastic hinges; and a
color-coordinated
Acrylic panel so children can see who lives inside each barn! A great
combination of dramatic play and educational elements all wrapped up in
one!
Our Thoughts: From the minute the Barnyard Activity Boxes found their way into the classroom until it was time to put them away for the day, children were mesmerized and wholly engaged in them! In fact, the children moved so quickly to get to them, that I wasn't even able to get a picture of all of the barnyards together!
The children used the barnyards in MANY different ways, but by far, the most popular was using the animals as puzzle pieces and inserting them through the cutouts on the sides! This in particular, is great for increasing fine motor, eye-hand coordination and manipulating the pieces to make them fit.
The barnyards also came in very useful in individualizing activities to meet the academic and learning needs of the children. They foster a great deal of language usage (discussing numbers, animals, animal sounds, colors, etc). I used the boxes with several children to practice counting (as we have many children who struggle counting past 1). We also used our imagination and had a barnyard parade (creating patterns with the animals)!
The Barnyard Activity Boxes are wonderful for (literally) hours of play and engagement and can be used in so many purposeful ways! For the time being, they've found a home on our math manipulative shelf and are still being used daily! They are well worth the investment!!!
So... what do other 'Guidecraft Educators' have to say about the Barnyard Activity Boxes?
The Giveaway
Guidecraft
is generously offering ONE lucky reader of the Guidecraft Educators a
chance to win one of these
Barnyard Activity Boxes sets!!! To
enter, head on over to
MommyPR for details!
Or... if you just can't wait to win one and NEED them now, they can be purchased online at:
If you're interested in finding out more information about any of the books reviewed or if you'd like to purchase the books, click the cover image for a link to Amazon.com. I am an Amazon Affiliate, so any purchases you make after clicking these images will result in my receiving a small percentage of the sale price!
Biggs, Brian.
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