Baa Baa Black Sheep Preschool Counting Game Printable

Our Baa Baa Black Sheep nursery rhyme fun continues this week with this darling preschool counting game printable. It is great for toddlers, preschoolers and even kindergartners for working on their counting skills from 1-12 and also works as an introduction and visual aid for learning simple addition facts. It's a simple and fun math activity that requires little prep and is a perfect theme for a spring or Easter learning activity for kids.

Monster Eyes Counting Game Preschool Printable

Using dice is a simple way for preschoolers to practice counting and learn basic addition and subtraction. We used them in our our recent Pumpkin Candy Addition Activity and my daughter loved it, so I put together another fun preschool math activity for her with a Halloween monster theme. In true monster fashion, we used googly eyes for our counting manipulatives. After downloading the monster eyes counting game preschool printable, get ready for some good giggly fun making silly monsters.  

Pumpkin Candy Preschool Math Printable

Now that my preschooler is pretty versed with recognizing and counting numbers up to twenty, I've started to introduce addition to her. Using counting manipulatives is a perfect way to help introduce addition to preschoolers. Not only is it great for fine motor skills having them grip the objects and move them around, but it also gives them a great visual of addition. Our creative preschool theme this week is all about pumpkins so it was a great excuse to buy some fun pumpkin candy and use them with our pumpkin candy preschool math printable to practice addition facts with my daughter. 

Preschool Pumpkin Lacing Activity with Printable

Counting and recognizing the teen numbers can be a bit tricky for a preschooler. I've been working with my preschooler on mastering those numbers lately and decided to put together this preschool pumpkin lacing activity as a fun way for her to practice them. It's perfect for fall and Halloween and not only does the activity help preschoolers practice counting and recognizing numbers 1 to 20, but it's fantastic for fine motor skills. I've included both a numbered and blank version of the printable so you can customize it however you choose.  We've also made a heart lacing printable in the past you might enjoy.   

Preschool Corn Counting Activity with Printable

One of our favorite activities during the Fall season is visiting a local pumpkin patch that has a huge corn box for the kids to play in. My preschooler loves to lay down in it and have her siblings cover all of her up except her face. Our love for the corn box inspired this Preschool Corn Counting Activity I am sharing with you today. It's a great activity for preschoolers to practice counting, recognizing numbers, hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. 

Box Tops Grocery Store Counting Activity

A big thank you to General Mills® for sponsoring today's post. We are avid Box Tops collectors at my house and have been for several years now. I have seen firsthand how beneficial the earnings can be for schools so we love participating in the program! With back to school time here, it's the perfect time to find and stock up on products with Box Tops so you can help your school increase their earnings quickly. Since we are always on the lookout for Box Tops when we go shopping at our local Walmart, I came up with this fun idea to not only keep my kids engaged while shopping, but to also incorporate working on math skills. I know you and your kids are going to love this simple and fun Box Tops Grocery Store Counting Activity!

Preschool Math Activity: Flower Dice Game Printable

Today I'm excited to share this quick and easy Flower Dice Game Printable that is a fabulous math activity for preschoolers. It is inspired by several I have seen over at Glued To My Crafts, like her Easter Dice Game and Snowman Dice Game. Not only is this game super simple, but it's great for practicing counting and I love how it uses fine motor skills to put those petals all around the flower.

Number Heart Lacing Preschool Activity

UPDATE 2/7/15: I was asked if I could make a black and white version of the printable to be copied on a copy machine and one with number 1-10. You can find the black and white version of the printable HERE and the 1-10 printable HERE.

I have been working with my preschooler on recognizing her teen numbers and number 20. She can count them out loud proficiently, but we've needed some extra practice with recognizing those tricky teen numbers. As a form of practice, I made this Valentine's Day themed Numbers Heart Lacing Activity. I love how it is not only number practice, but also incorporates working on fine motor skills with the lacing aspect of it.

Paper Plate Bubble Gum Machine Craft

My preschooler loves bubble gum, as most kids do. She is great about not swallowing it so I let her have it as an occasional treat with me. She recently learned how to blow a bubble which has made for lots of excitement. :) Since we have been practicing counting up to 20, I thought it would be fun to make a bubble gum machine craft for her to practice her counting. 

Learning Activities with Goldfish Crackers {Free Printable}

This post has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #GoldfishMix #CollectiveBias

One of my favorite ways to incorporate learning activities at home with my preschooler is with her favorite snacks. With little prep, it's amazing what fun activities you can come up with to keep your child engaged. Whenever I reach for Goldfish crackers in the pantry I am always met with a smile on my daughters face. She loves them! Not only are they awesome for snacking, but they work great for practicing counting and making patterns.  

Alphabet and Number Valentine's Matching Game (Free Printable)

My daughter has been loving our Alphabet Match activities lately using bottle caps, but I've been wanting to switch it up a bit for her to hold her interest. We have also been working on our teen numbers up to twenty so I've been working on ways to incorporate number practice with her every day. Since Valentine's Day is coming up next month, I created these Alphabet and Number Valentine's Day Matching Games.  

Counting Crocodiles...A preschool math activity

I happened upon a darling book at the library last week, "Counting Crocodiles" by Judy Sierra and illustrated by Will Hillenbrand. The book inspired a preschool activity full of math and fun!

Paper Plate Crab Craft with Numerical Sequence Practice

We have been having fun with crabs this week. If you missed our Small Crab World Moon Sand yesterday, make sure you check it out! Today we made this Paper Plate Crab Craft and to incorporate the book we've been reading, we practiced getting our numbers 1-10 in correct numerical sequence.

Robin Eggs Math Game with Contact Paper

I mentioned yesterday that we used our Robin Craft in a Math Game and I'm excited to share it with you. My 3 year old had a blast with it!

Easter Egg Sensory Play and Learning

I put together an Easter Egg Sensory Bin for my daughter last week and it was a hit! We are still working on recognizing our numbers so I decided to incorporate some learning in the bin with number and color matching.  

Valetine's Day Themed Preschool Activity Trays

We had another round of Valentine's Day themed activity trays this past week and I thought I would share them with you. We worked on numbers, counting, name recognition, matching, and fine motor.

Pumpkin Math (Counting Practice)

My 5yr old has been asking me non-stop for a couple days if he can make a pumpkin faces craft so I decided to turn the activity into something educational. Remember when I did that fun Snowman Math Activity with my preschooler last Winter? We did it again, but made pumpkins instead of snowmen.

The activity is so simple. I printed out a sheet that had numbers 1-12 on the bottom. Last year I kept them in order but since Luke just started Kindergarten, I wanted to make it a little more difficult so I mixed the numbers up.

Have your child use an orange Dot Marker to make the correct amount of pumpkins above each number, then they can decorate them to their hearts content. You can clearly see my son lost a little steam after decorating 15 pumpkins, so I suggested he just decorate the top pumpkin in each column. He liked that idea.

If your child is learning their number words, check out my Snowman post for an an idea of using flashcards with this activity. I made a quick printable with the numbers at the bottom if you need one. For the numbers in order click HERE. For the numbers out of order click HERE.

My son's idea to decorate pumpkin heads came from him checking this book out at the library this week, Night of the Pumpkinheads by Michael J. Rosen.

A group of restless pumpkinheads are tired of spending every Halloween sitting on the porch while all the kids get to dress up and go trick-or-treating. This year, the pumpkins magnificently transform into fearsome Frankenstein, the Loch Ness monster, a woolly mammoth, and even a grand slime beast . . . and then hit the town!

Luke was astounded by the amazing photographs of Hugh McMahon's real carved pumpkins and he laughed at the story's surprising ending. I thought it was a fun read for Halloween, especially since Luke enjoyed the carved pumpkins so much. There are even directions in the back to make one of the carvings in the book.

Snowman Math

Luke and I had fun today making a snowman scene while working on mathematics. I saw this idea in the Mailbox Magazine for Teachers. It is a simple, fun activity that any preschooler would love! All you need is a sheet of white paper with the number 1-12 (or 10, whatever you are working on) written along the bottom, flashcards corresponding to the numbers on the bottom of the paper and Bingo Dot Markers (found at the Dollar store).

Luke drew a flashcard out of the stack and practiced sounding out the number word as best he could. I obviously had to help him on most of them since they are phonetically ridiculous. haha! After he figured out the correct number, he found it at the bottom of his page and put that many dots above the number to build his snowman. Do this until you are done with every flashcard.

Then simply add some details to your snowmen with markers.

Now they are one big, happy snowman family!

Happy Crafting!!

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Slap the Ghost Game (Addition Practice)

Have you heard of this game before?? We had so much fun playing it the other night! Andy brought it home from school and was supposed to play it 4 times this week for homework but of course it was so much fun that we played it about a billion times. The game is designed to be played with 2 or 3 players.

Materials:
-Ghost Cards (I decided to make my own Template so I could share it, found HERE or HERE)
-Pair of Dice
-Beans or small candies such as skittles, smarties, M&Ms

Directions:
1. Cut the ghost cards out and spread them out so that all players can reach them.

2. Take turns shaking the dice. Once the dice are rolled, add the two dice together.

3. Slap the ghost with the correct number. The player that slaps the correct ghost first gets a bean (or treat).

4. The person with the most beans (or treats) at the end of the game wins. I guess you can determine how many times the dice is rolled before the game is over. We did 15 rolls each game.

Since Andy is obviously more advanced than Luke in addition since they are 2 yrs apart, we played rounds where we were extra slow so Luke could make sure to win. Plus, to make it even more fair, we decided it didn't matter who won the most because at the end of the game, I divided up all the treats and gave each child an equal amount.

For preschool age children, you could also just use one dice and only 6 cards. If I played this with Luke myself, that is how I would do it.

Happy Crafting!!

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"If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" Activities

This week we had fun reading "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" and "The Best Mouse Cookie" by Laura Numeroff.

Reading this story just wouldn't be complete without teaching the boys how to make their very own batch of chocolate chip cookies. So that's exactly what we did.

Warning: If you put your first batch of cookies in the oven while beginning the bedtime routine, you will in fact cook them about 2 minutes too long. haha! Good thing it was only the first 12 cookies, and these boys definitely had no complaints!!

My kids don't help me out in the kitchen too often so allowing them to measure things out and use the mixer was a HUGE deal to them! They had so much fun, and I quickly learned I need to give them more opportunities to help me out while preparing meals.

A couple weeks ago I saw this fun idea on Pencils, Proverbs, Pandemonium & Pins, to make paper cookies with a number written on them, and then have your child put the correct amount of chocolate chips on it to match the number. I knew it would be perfect to use with Luke to go along with these books.

I decided to laminate my cookies without a number written on them because I wanted to do a couple different activities with them also. After I laminated them, I simply used a dry erase marker to write numbers 1-12 on the cookies and my son counted out the correct amount of chocolate chips to put on the cookies.

Ok, he doesn't look that thrilled in this picture, but this is just his deep concentration look. He really was super excited about this math activity.

After he finished putting the chocolate chips on the cookies, I had him line the cookies up from least to greatest (1-10). I told him he could pick 3 cookies to eat the chocolate chips off of so he liked this part because it helped him figure out which cookies had the most on them.

I also reversed the activity by simply drawing the chocolate chips on the cookies and having him practice counting them to tell me how many were there.

I also let Luke practice drawing his numbers on the cookies himself. Then he put the correct amount of dots on the cookies himself.

This was a fabulous activity for my preschooler. You should for sure go check out  Pencils, Proverbs, Pandemonium & Pins for even more ideas to use with this book. She used this book for her entire homeschool week so she has lots of different ideas.