This post is written by guest contributor Amanda from @abalancedchildhood. She's sharing four enriching play-based learning activities that your child can do with Smiling Tree Toys' wooden Lowercase Alphabet Letters and 10-Piece Numbers Set.

I’m a big believer in summers being full of family, friends, and fun. However, I still like to surround my kids with fun learning opportunities throughout the day. Last summer, camps were closed due to Covid. Like everyone else, we had to adjust our daily expectations, and find ways to create fun lasting summer memories.

That's when my son and I came up with what we call, “Camp Mommy”. Every week we come up with a new fun theme that we want to learn about. We read books, create crafts, and do fun activities on the theme.

This year, since my kids are absolutely obsessed with lemonade, we decided to embrace summer with citrus themed activities and fun! 

With the help of Smiling Tree Toys' high quality, wooden lowercase alphabet letters and 10-piece numbers set, we were able to incorporate math and word/letter recognition into our citrus themed activities.

Did you know that early exposure to letters and numbers (especially through play) helps ignite your child’s interest and familiarity with them? That’s why something as simple as displaying words and numbers along with your activities helps prepare your young children for reading and math later in life.

For my youngest, unforced exposure to letters and numbers through play now, will certainly help her feel more comfortable and confident when she’s ready to learn letter identification. My recently turned 6 year old will be exposed to new vocabulary and reinforce the skills he learned in Kindergarten.

All of these learning skills can be developed through play and not forced learning!

4 Citrus Themed Play-Based Learning Activities

Citrus Words and Stamping

For some fun messy outdoor play, try citrus stamping! You can have fun creating citrus themed words using Smiling Tree Toy’s wooden alphabet letters as you create your artwork. To incorporate some science into the activity, have your children help mix citrus colors from light to dark. Discuss and compare the shades as you mix them. 

Counting Lemons

Practice early number sense and one-to-one correspondence while counting lemons, made out of play dough. Provide a visual of the numbers, using Smiling Tree Toy’s wooden numbers. Allow them to tap or point to a lemon and practice assigning one number to each lemon as they count.

Graphing Citrus

If your child has mastered one to one correspondence, have them sort and graph a variety of citrus shaped play dough cutouts. A great book to go with this activity is the MathStart book on bar graphs, Lemonade for Sale by Stuart J. Murphy.

Set up a bar graph using bothSmiling Tree'swooden lowercase alphabet letters and 10-piece numbers set. You can precut different amounts of lemons, limes, and oranges, and have your child count and sort them into the bar graph. 

Pink Lemonade Sensory Bin Citrus Patterns

We created this sensory bin using pink sand and our lemonade printables. Nolan’s task was to create patterns using the citrus cut outs. Simple, yet tons of fun! 

What will you create with your Smiling Tree Toys Lowercase Alphabet Letters and 10-Piece Numbers Set?

Smiling Tree's Lowercase Alphabet Letters and 10-Piece Numbers Set are truly great for all kinds of play-based learning activities. The possibilities for what your child can create and learn are endless.

Check out Smiling Tree Toys' entire educational collection today!

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Amanda is a stay at home momma to her son, Nolan, and daughter, Kenzie. She's married to her college sweetheart, Phelim. Before deciding to take the leap into being a full-time stay-at-home mom, she was an elementary school teacher (teaching 1st, 4th, and 5th grade). Her aim is to help develop language, motor skills, creativity, and social/emotional learning, while practicing mathematics, science, and literacy. Join her at www.abalancedchildhood.com for simple, fun, enriching activities and printables for the little in your life! Connect with her on Instagram at @abalancedchildhood.