Animal Cracker Counting and One-to-One Correspondence Practice
Little Brother is just a few months shy of being the exact same age that Big Brother was when I started this blog! Crazy! As with most second-born children, I am much more relaxed this time around. I now understand that we can take our time with all the letters, numbers, and shapes and just enjoy playing together, while still sprinkling a little bit of learning in now and then!
We had a lot of fun using animal crackers as math manipulatives today. I haven’t “formally” introduced numbers to Little Brother yet, but this activity goes to show how easy it is to incorporate learning into your every day routine…even when eating a snack!
Here’s what you’ll need: A piece of construction paper, a marker, and animal crackers (or another snack).
1. On a piece of construction paper, make 4 boxes and write the numeral 1-4 in each of the boxes.
2. Line up 10 animal crackers to the side.
3. Point to each number, saying it aloud. Then count the corresponding number of animal crackers while your little one puts them on the paper.
And the best part is eating the “manipulatives”!
I did this type of teaching with my child, only I used coloured “smarties”. First I told friends not to buy him gifts of smarties, anything else was fine. We began by counting 1 – 10, naming the colour, later expanding to 20, so he could understand the concept of 10 – 100, but 100 smarties was the whole pack, so we counted cars while walking and debated on the colour of the car (are you sure it’s red, looks pink to me, maybe your right. Or it’s purple!) By four years he was able to add and subtract. Of course he got to eat the “smarties” when he answered correctly.