Kids Wednesday: Hole Punching

I have been searching forever for my hole punch.  I put it in a really smart spot but I couldn't figure out where that was.  Do you ever do that?  I sadly do it way too often.

There is a reason that everything should have a spot but once I gave up my office for the nursery, all of my stuff got misplaced because there was no longer anywhere to put it.  I have tried to go through and get rid of things that I didn't need and put things together but I still couldn't find the single hole punch.  I was going to go out buy another one but that makes me crazy because I know it is in the house somewhere.  I borrowed a few doing the year to different shapes from my son's preschool and anything else I had to smoosh into the three hole punch to make one hole at a time.

I was cleaning out the basket on the stairs and I found it.  Why on earth was it in that basket?  I guess it was with ribbons and things that I must have use to attach cards to something ages ago.  I am glad that I stuck with it and now I was excited to find lots of things to do with my hole punch when I saw an activity that my son could do with it!!!!

I picked out this one because it looked fun to pick out all the numbers.  It is a great hand eye coordination to use the hole punch and get it on the paper as well as patience to get them all.  It printed two of the same number on the page and then you could cut them in half.  I decided that since I only have one kid and I don't like to waste the paper that I would turn the second half into the "teens."  I turned the 1 card into 11 and the 2 into 12.  I thought that it would make it last a little longer and test more numbers.  It was great to make my son stop and pay attention to the different writing styles.

I thought this one was amazing and you could make your own based on whatever your kids are learning about.  This one does counting and then some adding and subtracting.  It was perfect for some morning work to keep numbers into our weekly learning.  Plus sometimes I need an activity to hold him over while I am making dinner and this is perfect!!!  It seems that you could easily move this into multiplication. 

Of course my son thought it needed an equal sign so he had to make one on each as he did the problem.

If your kids are still working at the hand eye coordination and you would like to do it but they aren't adding numbers, there is a great activity to do with do with pictures here.  We didn't do that one but it looks like it is a lot of fun.  The pictures are bright and colorful if you print them in color or different enough that you can print and black and white.

There are so many ideas such as using punch cards or making your own.  Here is a template of a tooth for dental health or before going to the dentist.  It is an easy shape but you could use the idea to make your own so that your kids can practice stitching up the holes.  It is more great hand eye coordination with the use of the trusty hole punch!  We already have our lace up cards that my son loves that I got through Scholastic Book orders from his school.  I had to add an extra shoelace for one because my son wanted them to be color coordinated but lace up cards are fun whether you buy or make them!

I hope that you have lots of fun with your hole punch and I look forward to making lots of different new crafts with the hole punch.