Posts Tagged ‘Preschool Math Lessons’
Every day items make great math manipulatives . When my son’s preschool class did a similar lesson using nice counting bears I knew I wanted to do it at home but with stuff I already had in my art closet. This activity was great because it gave my son a chance to do things he loves like estimate and count as well as things he resists doing like writing . All with things I had around the house!
- Gather your materials. You will need some jars or clear plastic containers, small items to pop in them , paper, a pencil, and a clip board. For some reason if I put paper on a clip board my son is way more excited to write than plain old paper.
- Start by filling the jars with small objects. I used corks, pom poms and plastic frog toys. Make sure there are enough to make it a little challenging, they shouldn’t be able to easily count the manipulatives when they are in the jar.
- Write a simple chart to record the items are in each jar .
We only recorded the estimates but you can also write the results. I want to encourage my son to write but without pushing. - Time to estimate!
- Write it down.
- Open and count.
- Repeat with other jars .
Patterns, ordering, shapes , sorting and counting are all used in this simple Valentine’s Day craft made with playing cards . That’s not even all the wonderful skills used, lacing the cards on uses fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. What I love is that I can make a Valentine’s day craft that is educational, low mess ( no glitter, glue or paint) and cost me less than $3!
- Gather your materials. You will need a deck of playing cards with a red design on the back, a heart paper punch, hole punch, some ribbon or yarn , scissors and some clear tape.
- Start by sorting the cards into suits .
This is a long craft so I only put two suits on our place mat. 
- Next place the cards in numerical order.
- Next hand your child the heart punch and have them punch hearts in cards of other suits . We used the clovers that we sorted in the 2nd step.
- While they do that punch holes in the cards that they put in numerical order.
- Punch holes in the hearts .
- Start threading. This is not easy. Be prepared to help, or if you have a child like mine be prepared to be told you aren’t allowed to help and wait until they ask for it. To make lacing easier wrap tape around the ends of the ribbon/ yarn.
My 4 year old laced 3 cards and 4 hearts alone, then handed me the right numbers as I did the lacing. A nice thing about using playing cards is that they are sturdy and hard to tear. 
- Hang it up!
I hate just recycling scrap wrapping paper after wrapping gifts. I’d much rather use it for crafts! I also like that this craft is a pretty fast one to set up and depending on your child’s abilities they can do this semi independently. I made lunch while my son did this , stopping only to take pictures and reign in his glue habit ( I would have used a glue stick if mine weren’t all dried up – must get some new ones). One other thing I’d do differently – I’d use a larger piece of paper ( or smaller trees) so you could also make the squares larger, the small ones were at some times tricky to match up.
- Gather your materials. You will need a large sheet of construction paper multiple scrap pieces of wrapping paper,a marker, scissors and glue.
- Start by cutting your wrapping paper into 3 different trees .
- cut the rest into square ‘gifts”
- Glue the trees onto the paper.
- Invite your child to sort and match!
- Glue them on. Like I said a glue stick would be ideal but white glue worked.
More Gift Wrap Crafts
This month will be filled with Fall and Halloween crafts and themed activities . I had to post this one now so that all of you Target shoppers can get to the dollar spot to buy these Halloween erasers before they are gobbled up. I love using themed mini erasers for learning activities especially as math manipulatives.
Halloween Graphing
Using manipulatives is a great way to introduce children to graphing. Explain that graphs help us see the answers to questions . Also take the time to make predictions before graphing , such as which row will have the most , which will have the least?Ask them why? I am always fascinated by the reasons why my son makes certain predictions.
- Gather your materials. You will need a large piece of white paper, a ruler, markers, some fun Halloween manipulatives, and a plastic jack-o-lantern container. I think when you try to make everything themed kids get more excited and learn more.
- Start by making an easy graph. I used pictures and words to represent our manipulatives, my son is interested in the words but not yet ready to rely only on them.
- Grab the manipulatives you are using . I made sure to have 3 different amounts . Pop them in your jack-0-lantern.
- Invite your child(costume optional) to the table to start. My son dumped the erasers but taking them out one at a time is great too!
- Ask your child to make a prediction – which of the three designs do they think will have the most? Least? Why?
- Place them on the graph.
- Keep going!
- Just by looking at them which has the most? Least?
- Count them to check.
Halloween Patterns
Patterning was one of my favorite preschool math activities to teach. I have found that if you sing song the pattern children have an easier time recognizing the pattern and start using that device themselves when encountered with a pattern they need to continue.
- Gather your materials. 2-3 different manipulatives like these Halloween themed erasers in a container, some sentence strips are optional but I like them because they give my son a frame for the pattern. When I simply place the erasers on the table it looks like I expect him to keep the pattern going to the edge of the table and the task seems much more daunting.
- Make some simple patterns .
- Provide a container and ask your child to keep the pattern going.
- If they need help try labeling the pattern out loud . For example saying ” Pumpkin, Bat, Pumpkin, Bat… what comes next?
- Keep going, if they are frustrated with the more difficult patterns scrap them and make multiple simpler ones. The goal is success and if it’s too challenging for them they will get frustrated and learning will be minimal.
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This was a fast easy activity I wanted to do to work on my son’s one to one correspondence but using a theme he is head over heels for . This also allowed me to work on the concept of zero. Since doing this we have been noticing that there are “zero” dinosaurs in the backyard, “zero” boys eating their broccoli at lunch and “zero” children napping! I love it when I stumble on a concept that is new to him and we can work on it in a fun way.
- Gather your materials. You will need 2 sheets of paper , some yarn, a marker, scissors and glue.
- Start by drawing the outline of a guitar on your brown paper . Don’t get hung up on it being perfect, as long as your child can tell it’s a guitar – you are fine!
- Cut out.
You could also do this whole activity just with paper as a work sheet, but I find that even though the difference isn’t great to us between using a pen or the yarn , I think it is for children. Manipulating the objects really creates an experience. - Next add the details and numbers .
- Cut your yarn into short pieces for the strings.
- Time to glue!
This is the step my son joined me at.
Depending on your child’s interest and age you could have them join in whenever. Glue the guitars on. - Identify the numbers and add that many pieces of yarn.
Songs!
I posted this on my facebook page ) but if you missed it. All my song videos that were originally on my blogger site are frozen so you can see them all here !
Book
Sunny
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