There's nothing my boys love more than tiny toys - little dinosaurs, LEGOs, you name it. So when our friends at Education.com sent me this really fun activity to try I knew it was right up their alley - and a great way for us to practice counting and math skills too!
Thank you to our friends at Education.com for this guest post. This post contains affiliate links. See my Disclosure Policy for details.
If your preschooler is into bright colors and tiny objects too, then this is a great opportunity to combine those interests into an unexpected learning opportunity! This counting activity will help your child see addition equations in a different way. It can be modified to strengthen subtraction skills too. Whether your child is already in preschool, homeschooling, or just looking for a boredom buster, you can use as little as five minutes of this counting exercise to reinforce your child's experience with number equations. And have fun at the same time!
A Hands On Preschool Math Activity
What You Need:- Play Dough
- Index Cards
- Marker
- Small Objects - toy dinosaurs, LEGOs or minifigures, or coins. Whatever will engage your child the most!
What To Do:
Separate the play dough into two pieces. Take one of the chunks and divide it into two. Flatten all three pieces so they will fit your toys.
Set them down on a table, with an index card between each so that it sits like this: small chunk of dough, paper (with a plus sign drawn on it), small chunk of dough, paper (with an equals sign drawn on it), and the large chunk of dough.
Write out an addition equation for your child on another index card. Now you're ready to play!
Have your child count out and place their objects into the chunks of play dough according to the equation’s properties. Encourage them to practice counting while matching their pieces to the equation and solving the problem!
More Ways to Play:
This works well with subtraction equations as well. For the equation 7 - 3 = 4, have your child count out seven objects and place them in the large chunk of dough. Have them take out three objects, place them in the smaller section, then count out how many are left over to put after the equals sign.
You can also reinforce the skills by having them illustrate each equation on paper, while telling you what they are doing (in order to and engage all of the learning skills). Keep a set of equation cards on hand to practice any time you'd like - this is a perfect quick learning activity they can try again and again.
See even more fun addition activities from Education.com here!