by Arlene Sprague, Ph.D.
If you have a youngster who is entering first grade or if your child is in the early primary grades, this art-and-math activity will provide some fun togethertime and help your child begin thinking mathematically before the school year begins. Understanding numbers is crucial to understanding mathematics, and hands-on activities like this one can provide an important concrete foundation for later more abstract mathematical thought.
Materials:
Construction paper
Tissue paper or Easter-basket grass
Glue and scissors
Jelly beans or other small
colorful candies
Instructions: Depending on your child’s age and current understanding of numbers, cut out from five to 12 construction paper circles in graduated sizes. Each one must be clearly larger than the one before.
Let your child make a “bird’s nest” on each circle using glue and crumpled tissue paper or Easter-basket grass. Trim nests if necessary to make sure the size of each nest is still clearly smaller than the next one.
Have the child help you arrange the nests in order from smallest to largest, talking about larger and smaller in the process.
Using jelly beans or your child’s favorite small candies, have your youngster place two candies in each nest, then add two more to each nest except the first (smallest) one, then add two more to each nest but the first two, and so on, until each larger nest has two more candies than the one before.
Talk with your child about which has more candies and which has fewer.
Pull out two nests and have your child tell which has more or fewer. When they answer, ask how they know that. Repeat this a few times. (Your youngster may have trouble with larger numbers of “eggs”, especially when two nests are almost the same size. Be sure to continue using concepts of larger/smaller and more/fewer as you talk together, and allow for re-counting as often as necessary. Your child can’t hold or manipulate numbers in memory as easily as you can, so be patient!)
Mix up the nests and have your child arrange them in order again, talking about larger and smaller, more than and less than.
Have your child count the candies in each nest. If he has counted by twos before, your child can use the candies in the nests to count by twos. If this is new to your little one, as the child counts the number of candies in each nest, you can write the number on a card and place it beside each nest. Then the child may be able to use the cards to count by twos, or you and your child may count together by twos as far as he can remember the numbers. Having your support by counting together may help your child count further than he could alone.
Continue to play only as long as your child is having fun, and follow your child’s lead as much as possible. There are no rules, and the best part is your child can eat some of the “bird’s eggs” when the activity is over.
Extensions:
If you started with five or six nests for this activity, you and your child can make more nests as your young one gains experience and confidence.
These same activities can be repeated later with threes and fives to give your child a visual and tactile/kinesthetic sense of number, greater than/less than, and counting by multiples. Math can be FUN!
Dr. Arlene Sprague has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology fromthe University of Tennessee. She recently retired as a full professor of psychology at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn..
