CHRISTMAS SPIN AND COVER MATS

This simple to prep, Christmas themed center is perfect for building spatial awareness and visual discrimination skills in an engaging hands on way for preschoolers through to first grade.

If you're looking for a easy prep Christmas activity to add to your math centres, these Spin and Cover Mats might be just what you need this Christmas in your kindergarten classroom.

They're a fun hands-on way to build visual discrimination skills and spatial awareness as children have to work to match the shape on the spinner to the pattern block and then to the mat.

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Designed to fit on a single page, there are two different sets of mats to choose between.

The easier set shows the shapes in the same colours as the actual pattern blocks and the spinner also pictures of the shapes in their traditional colours. 

This leaves the children to simply identify the shape, match it to the correct block then rotate/slide/flip the pattern block to match the one in the Christmas design.

The act of having to identify and then move shape both mentally and physically helps build spatial awareness.

For more of a challenge, you can use the mats that use other colours in the design like the reindeer pictured below.

The task then becomes more challenging as the child can't just rely on matching the colour of the block to the shape they have spun. This subtle variation is ideal for building visual discrimination skills and form constancy in young children.

In simple terms, visual discrimination is the ability to look at two things and discern their differences. It's an important aspect of visual processing and a skill we use daily as we use it to help us make sense of our environment. 

It is especially important as we learn to read and write. 

As an example, visual discrimination skills allows us to look at two symbols that are similar like 's' and '5' and know one is a letter while the other is a number.

Form constancy is another visual perceptual skill that allows children to understand that a symbol, shape or object stays the same even when it changes size, position or shape.

For example, we use this skill to recognize letters and words when reading in different fonts, that the letter a is still an a even when it looks different.

Sorting and playing matching games like these Christmas Spin + Cover Mats with young children is a perfect way to help develop these skills in early childhood.

These Christmas themed mats are a fun and engaging way to build these important skills from preschool through to first and second grade even. 

Have them choose from the different designs included - a Christmas tree, stocking, Santa's hat, reindeer, bell or a star then create a simple spinner using a paper clip and pencil. Just stand the pencil over one of the loops in the paper clip then flick one end of the paper clip to make to spin while pressing lightly down on the pencil to hold it in place. To make it easier for younger children, I press a small hole in the centre of the spinner once laminated as this allows the pencil somewhere to sit.

Then just add some pattern blocks!