Make math fun for your preschooler or kindergartner with some leaf counters! You could use these plastic ones, felt ones or even real leaves!
This activity can be adapted for children of all ages, keep on reading to find out more!
You will need a white board, markers, leaves and a dice. Use both of these to alternate, which makes it more fun, or if your child is not yet familiar with the numbers itself. Draw a tree on the board and let the fun begin!
We did a matching activity first, just to get the brain going. I added the numbers and the dots on the tree. Lella(5 years), rolled the dices and matched it with the leaves.
Then, she rolled a dice, and I added the number(2) below the tree. She counted out the leaves and placed it on the tree. Another roll, adding the number(3), and leaves. She counted all the leaves on the tree to get to the answer(5), which I wrote down for her at first. Later she wanted to do the writing herself, I only helped with the +, = etc.
If your child is not yet familiar with written numbers and mathematical signs and you would rather use this activity as a playful counting activity, leave out the sum writing below the tree and “play” it like a story. For instance: “One day there was a tree, and each day the tree woke up his leaves changed. The first day(add leaves), he had 3 green leaves, the next day he had 2 red leaves….” Carry on like that,mother for the subtracting side: “The wind started blowing one night and when the tree woke up, 4 leaves had fallen on the ground (remove leaves), now there were only 1 leaf left on the tree…”
After doing a whole bunch of these easy sums, I introduced the minus concept. This is something we will work more on in the feature, but perhaps you will want to use this as an extension activity. Turn the game around now, and start with a larger number (whatever your child is familiar with), roll the dice to see how many leaves will fall off (be subtracted).
This activity is fun and hands on which is the best way for children to learn, right?
You might like to see these fall learning activities:
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This is so creative and lovely… I liked this maths activity.