Counting Plates

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Materials:

• 10 small paper plates
• round circle stickers
• cardstock squares with number 1-10 printed on them
• pom-poms
  

How to make: 
Starting with the first plate, stick 1 round sticker on it. For plate 2, stick 2 round stickers on it, proceed the same up to 10. Write the number for each plate on the back of it.

Activity:
Child practices one to one correspondence as he/she places pom-poms onto each dot on a plate.

Child learns to count dots as he/she places pom-poms

Then have him/her find the number tile that matches the number of items and place it on the plate.

Turning the plates over, child counts pom-poms onto appropriate number.

Leah, 2.5 yrs old

Although Leah is good at counting, and is able to place the puff balls in the small white circles, she prefers randomly distributing puff balls among the plates and pretending they're food. She also likes pouring them off the plates back into the bowl. I think she'll grow into counting them out to match the plates.

Pushing Puff Balls

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Materials:

• Plastic yogurt or butter tub (with lid)
• pom-poms or cotton balls
• scissors
• colored permanent markers to match pom pom colors

How to make: 
Instructions for making the pushing puff balls activity can be found here on the blog Children's Learning Activities.

Younger children simply push the pom-poms through the holes (the holes are slightly smaller than the pom-poms so the kids must push them through, rather than just dropping them in the holes). We used colored permanent markers to color around each hole so older children have to match the color of the pom pom to the proper hole, not just push them through any hole. Children could also count the pom-poms as they push them into the container - how many of each color are there? How many total?