materials. I especially love that there are so many ways to play them other than just the rules outlined in the Teachers Guide. This is handy for when Miss M decides she doesn't want to play "that way" but is still interested in using the materials. Here are some different ways we've used a couple of this week's games.
I came up with four (or six) different ways to play The Parking Game. The first way was fairly straightforward, using a numbered die and having her choose a car and place it on the matching parking space, then tell me the color and shape on the car. You could do a variation using a traditional die with dots to help with counting and pattern recognition. Since my girls love the math manipulatives and I wanted to work on teaching Littlest colors, we added in a color matching component with the planes.
We also did another variation highlighting the shapes on the cars. I made little tags with corresponding shapes and taped them to the board. You then take turns drawing a car card and placing it on the corresponding shape space, identifying the number of the parking space. You can also reverse this by parking the cars in the spaces, then using your homemade shape cards to unpark a car and reveal the number underneath. If you want to work on colors instead of shapes, either of these variations works for that as well. 
Miss M loved the Race Car Matching game and was able to do it in the traditional manner (she actually beat me and I wasn't even trying to let her) but for a younger child who needed a simpler game, I would have kept the cards divided into upper and lower case, turned over the lower case letters and divided the upper case letters between the two of us. Each player turns over one card and that is the one they are trying to match first. Take turns looking for your match and turning over new cards in your personal deck when you find them until all matches have been made.
The Delivery Truck game was really fun. We started by constructing our delivery trucks. The girls decided to use stickers instead of coloring. I've found stickers to be a fun fine motor skill for kids and stock up whenever I can find them cheaply. I just got a whole book of 208 gingerbread stickers at JoAnn's for $1.49.
After your truck is done, put together the house cards. I laminated everything so they didn't fold very well and I ended up just getting off the bottom and making a pocket. I taped out a little road on the floor, put the package cards in a cottage cheese tub and dubbed it "the factory" and Miss M loaded up her truck with five packages at a time, delivering them to the appropriate house and returning for more packages when she'd finished. After they'd all been delivered, we unpacked them from their houses and identified the pictures on the back.
I also wanted to share our science project, the car ramp. Miss M was very excited for this one and actually requested it after we had already been doing school for close to two hours and when she is normally ready to just play. We figured out the right height for our ramp and a slick surface to help them maintain momentum but then she wanted to add a tunnel. It took a little experimenting to figure out how to make it tall enough and keep the the supports far enough from the ramp to prevent our cars from running it to them but the end result was a lot of fun.
These are cleverly done with the children of both ages learning skills with much creativity. Each game holds their attention so well and they are learning very effectively. Well done! The variations are perfect.
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