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 .
Discovering Montessori says
This is a really neat idea! I was thinking about an activity that would interest the preschoolers to visit the math area more often this is perfect. Thank you for sharing.
Darcey says
I like the idea. It’s simple and uses everyday items and the kids have fun with it. I’ve included your post on my weekly favorites here: http://play2grow.blogspot.com/2011/02/weekly-favorites-for-february-13-2011.html
Christina says
Being housebound during a storm had me turning to your site, and I loved this activity. I did it with my 4 year old–we also added the idea of “DIfference,” talking about how many were between his estimate (all his favorite numbers, like 4 and 100) and the actual count.
Thanks for such a simple and great idea!