A Whole Lot of Learning With A Few Little Bears

We inherited these little manipulative bears from my sister once her littles had outgrown them. We use them for all kinds of things. Recently I put them in a busy bag along with these counting cards I made using Microsoft Word and my laminator.

There are so many things you can use these for. A and I counted

 and created patterns on the number cards

 Then we made patterns without the number cards. I started several and A would finish them, then we would switch. We made tons of different patterns and I introduced him to ABABAB, ABBABBABB, ABCABCABC, amongst others.

Then we sorted them by color. We actually have two different sets, you can see the difference in the above photo, so A eventually sorted them by color and into the different sets. 

A sat and played with these for about an hour before going off to something else. When he started getting bored I would introduce a new concept and he was off and running again. Now he is able to sit with these by himself and do different activities, without my guidance.