I love Monday Made It!! Cuz I love making stuff. I love finding ideas for using routine and ordinary items in the classroom.
What’s more ordinary than Q-Tips?!
How about turning them into pretty and colorful manipulatives?!
Materials:
plastic cups
wax paper
liquid watercolors (or food coloring)
Q-Tips
water
Put several drops of liquid watercolor (or food coloring) into a cup. Add a little water. Adjust the amount of water and watercolor to adjust the color.
Dip the Q-Tips into the watercolor and water. I let it sit for a few seconds. Lay the Q_tips on wax paper to dry. Drying takes a few hours so be patient!
So, now that I’ve made several hundred colored Q-Tips, what will I do with them?!?!
Here are some ideas:
sorting/colors
patterns
counting
addition
subtraction
greater than less than
build letters
build numbers
build shapes
counting syllables