My Little Bean Counters

We are learning about plants and seeds.  This is one of our math activities for this week.

Equipment

• beans or other seeds (we also used corn kernels)
• paper folded in 6ths (or quarters for a faster finish)
• crayons
• white glue

 

Process

• Children write a number in a square (I let the kiddos pick their own numbers to make it a little more fun)
• Children make the number by gluing on the corresponding amount of beans/seeds
• When done they can read and show their numbers to the teacher or a friend (checking)

Skills

• fine motor skills (pinching and placing beans)
• number writing skills
• making sets
• counting sets
• using white glue (a small dot and that's the lot)

Sorting

We had fun sorting beans and pasta pieces in the sensory table.

We had a mix of different pasta shapes and a variety of beans and some corm kernels in the sensory table.  We used small cups (the kind you put your ketchup in at fast food restaurants)

Skills

• Sorting
• Counting
• Fine motor skills

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We are learning about life-cycles so we decided to read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle.

As a math extension activity we created our very own nibbled leaves.  The kiddos LOVED this activitiy.

Equipment

• brown, yellow and green construction paper (1 back ground and ten leaves per child)
• hole punchers
• markers and glue

I made the backgrounds by cutting out and gluing the vines to the yellow paper.  I also cut out the leaf shapes ahead of time.

Process

• The children wrote the numbers 1-10  on their leaves (1 on one leaf, 2 on the next leaf etc)
• Then they used the hole punches and punched the corresponding number of holes on each leaf.
• When they were done the children glued their leaves onto the vine.  (I did not tell them they had to put them in number order but many of them did so)
• When the vine was completed the children dictated a story to go along with it.
• While the children were working we talked about the story that we had read and what the caterpillar ate.  We also talked about the butterfly life-cycle.

Skills

• counting with cardinality
• reading and writing numbers
• ordering numbers from 1 to 10
• using a hole punch
• developing hand muscles strength
• gluing
• recalling or retelling the events in a story

Play Dough Number Fun

Play dough is such a great learning resource.  There are so many great things that we can do with it.

Here we are making numbers and showing sets up to ten.  I laminated some sheets that I found  (a LONG time ago) on a website called childcareland.com, a really GREAT site with lots of ideas)

Skills

• reading numbers
• counting sets of objects
• making sets
• rolling play dough 'snakes'
• rolling play dough 'balls'
• using fine motor skills and developing hand muscles strength

Counting Fun

We practiced our counting and fine motor skills by threading beads onto pipe cleaners.

Equipment

• 20 pipe cleaners
• numbers 1-20 on small pieced of card stock (taped to pipe cleaners)
• small beads such as pony beads

Skills

• reading numbers 1-20
• counting objects to 20 with cardinality
• threading
• sorting by color
• making simple patterns

Dice Games - Simple Addition

Dice are so much fun to play with, especially when you get to toss them and count their totals.  That's what we did with this simple yet fun game.  Just roll the dice, count the total and place a counter on the corresponding number.

Equipment

• 2 dice
• game sheets (with the numbers 2-12)
• counters

Skills

• subitizing (knowing how many in a group without counting)
• counting
• addition
• reading numbers 2-12
• taking turns

Counting Fun with Pom Poms

We had lots of fun counting and sorting pom poms. The children used tweezers to pick up and sort pom poms into bowls.  Each bowl had a number and the children filled the bowls with the corresponding numbers. The children checked in with me to make sure they had counted correctly.

Equipment

• 20 paper bowls (numbers 1-20 written on them)
• plastic tweezers or tongs
• pom poms

Skills

• reading numbers 1-20
• counting objects up to 20 with  1 to 1 correspondence
• using tweezers
• sorting by color and or size