Following on from my letter activity using dinosaurs, here is another simple activity that is perfect for preschoolers. This time it is to help with numbers and counting. Rufus is good at counting, but gets mixed up when reading numbers 6 and 9 (Winston did the same) and this exercise was specifically to target that.
Rufus loves cars, so I thought he would attempt this without any trouble – and it worked! After a few attempts, Rufus could differentiate easily between numbers 6 and 9…and then I test him casually as we’re walking past houses on our street – a tip from my mum.
Everything you need is very simple and it is easy to adapt depending on your child’s interests – spacemen landing on a planet, fairies landing on the petal of a flower, rockets on the moon, trains at the station, and so on.
What you need:
- 10 cars
- An A3 sheet of black foam (or card would work too)
- A TippEx pen
- 10 small squares of paper
- Sellotape
- Pen
- First prepare your ‘car park’ by drawing 10 equal car parking spaces onto your sheet of foam with the TippEx pen (see below).
- Then in each car parking space draw a different numbers of spots using TippEx (see below) – draw one spot in one space, two in another and so on, until you get to ten.
- Write numbers one to ten on your small squares of paper and sellotape each number to a car.
- Ask your toddler to count the spots in the car parking space, then ‘park’ the car with the correct number on it, into that space.
- Continue until they have parked each car into the correct space.
E xx
Your activities are right up my street Esther (scuse the pun!) I love making these sorts of games for Freddie- he’s very into cars and trains so I’m definitely going to try this. I did a similar one with parking cars to match the letters of his name which worked really well. Off to make this one! Thanks for sharing your fab ideas. Love them! xx
I loved the pun! I have to be more creative with Rufus, so I can find out what he’s picked up. I probably do it mostly for me though, because I get real satisfaction knowing that something is going in! x
I’m amazed at how they catch on to counting so quickly. We were going up the stairs the other day and Phoenix counted all the way then continued to 15. I was gobsmacked! Just goes to show they are listening to everything!
Love this game set up, xx
They really do listen to absolutely everything! It’s incredible! x
This is such a cute idea – I might try it with T, he has SO MANY cars! x
Thanks Donna! My boys do too, yet they always seem to want a particular one…haha xx