Days with Grey offers play-based learning resources including a course, guides, and activity ideas for kids. My favorite resource is her Breakfast Invitation that usually involves a large sheet of paper and an independent creative project for children to do in the morning. Parents are encouraged to ask questions about their child’s play while children are engaged in critical thinking, self-control, and letter/number recognition. One Breakfast Invitation is the Sticker Number Match where children match the quantity of stickers to its matching number. 

Authentic Learning Experience: Incorporating learning into predictable morning routines emphasizes the importance of education in a family. Families who talk about education together and practice numbers and letters with their children are helping to increase motivation and self-efficacy for their child’s learning. Seeing how counting, matching, and reading are used in daily life and can spark conversations is an example of how what children are learning in school can be applied in real world contexts.

Developmentally Appropriate Practices: The Breakfast Invitations offer a wide range of activities that typically involve using fine motor skills such as the pincher grasp for markers, language skills for discussing their findings with their adults, and academic development in literacy and mathematics when the activities involve letter and number recognition, matching, and tracing.

Learning Standards: 

Approaches to Learning

Goal P-ATL 5. Child demonstrates an increasing ability to control impulses.

Goal P-ATL 6. Child maintains focus and sustains attention with minimal adult support.

Goal P-ATL 7. Child persists in tasks.

Goal P-ATL 11. Child shows interest in and curiosity about the world around them.

Goal P-ATL 12. Child expresses creativity in thinking and communication.

Goal P-ATL 13. Child uses imagination in play and interactions with others.

Language and Communication

Goal P-LC 5. Child expresses self in increasingly long, detailed, and sophisticated ways.

Social and Emotional Development

Goal P-SE 1. Child engages in and maintains positive relationships and interactions with adults.

Goal P-SE 9. Child recognizes self as a unique individual having own abilities, characteristics, emotions, and interests.

Literacy

Goal P-LIT 3. Child identifies letters of the alphabet and produces correct sounds associated with letters.

Goal P-LIT 6. Child writes for a variety of purposes using increasingly sophisticated marks.

Mathematics Development

Goal P-MATH 1. Child knows number names and the count sequence.

Goal P-MATH 2. Child recognizes the number of objects in a small set.

Goal P-MATH 3. Child understands the relationship between numbers and quantities.

Goal P-MATH 5. Child associates a quantity with written numerals up to 5 and begins to write numbers.

Goal P-MATH 7. Child understands simple patterns.

Perceptual, Motor, and Physical Development

Goal P-PMP 3. Child demonstrates increasing control, strength, and coordination of small muscles.

Goal P-PMP 4. Preschoolers exhibit complex fine motor coordination when using tools to complete tasks.

Source: https://dayswithgrey.com/