To make learning an important lesson fun, we always incorporate toys. We use toys in lots of our lessons because we believe that learning should be fun! Toys work really well for us, especially when teaching a new or tough concept for the first time. Here are highlights from some of our successful lessons:

MATH

Addition, subtraction and multiplication

One of the most obvious ways to use toys is when learning addition, subtraction and multiplication. In our case, we used hot wheels cars when we were learning addition, subtraction and multiplication. However, you can use stuffed toys, plastic dinosaurs, or anything else you can group. Select and group toys by color or type (truck, convertible, racing, fantasy, utility, etc.) and then ask questions such as:

• ‘There are _____ more cars than trucks?’
• ‘How many more yellow cars than trucks are there?’
• ‘How many fewer red trucks than white cars are there?’
• ‘If I have ten cars and you have five, how many do we have altogether?’
• If you create three groups of three cars, have your child write it as a multiplication problem (3X3) and use the cars to see how to use addition to check this answer.

PHYSICS

Momentum experiment

Another way we use toys is in our physics experiments. In our first experiment, we devised a way to test ideas about which hot wheels cars had the greatest momentum. We used parts of a toy race track and about 10 various hot wheels cars. We gave each car a name and weighed it using a cheap food scale. We used packing tape, a ruler and a sharpie to measure the distance each car traveled, a stop watch to measure time of travel and a piece of paper to record our data and calculate our results.

Alka-Seltzer Rocket experiment

Of course, we had to add a payload to our Alka-Seltzer rocket as part of our experiment. We used a couple of plastic astronaut figures and gave them famous astronaut names, too (Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11 fame).

ART

Still Life

When learning about ‘Still Life’ art, we chose some toys, arranged them and used watercolor crayons to draw and color them.