*please excuse the photo quality, I am using my phone for images temporarily*
Welcome back to the blog, friends! Our homeschool year is in full swing and I thought I would share a very easy math center I put together for my five-year old son. He’s working on counting and adding and one of the easiest ways to reinforce the concept of amounts and counting is through hands-on activities.
For this center I used a simple plastic heart-shaped manipulative. We also have animals, teddy bears, blocks, sea shells, polished stones, and more. Really, any scoopable item is great for this center.
To visually reinforce differing amounts, I simply gathered six different containers, five were clear containers and the sixth was an egg carton.
For tactile reinforcement we used a chunky pair of children’s sensory tweezers. One could also use a spoon to scoop or simply have their child use their hands.
For the worksheet I simply created a quick template in word and used a border template from a binder of templates I have (I found these at Goodwill – what a find!).
I had him count the hearts as he was dropping them into the container. After he filled each container, he simply wrote down the number of hearts on the sheet next to the number container we were on. The largest of the containers held seventy-one hearts!
My two-year old daughter also enjoyed this activity. It’s an easy and fun way to teach counting. Kids love to gather, group, scoop, and manipulate objects. I hope you enjoy replicating this center. Feel free to share some of your own fun math centers!
Happy homeschooling, friends!
The Joyful Homemaker
Image – painting by George Goodwin Kilburne
