We absolutely love this time of year, autumn gives us the perfect opportunity to go for walks outside and collect leaves, conkers and acorns from the ground. Ethan and Ivy come home with huge handfuls of these treasures and we're always looking for fun ways to play with them. So, this week we've been working on our counting skills with a bunch of acorns that we collected.
I set up two different trays, one for each of them. Ethan (nearly 4) had a tray that was focused on identifying numerals and counting, whilst Ivy (19 months) had a tray that was meant to help with her counting and manipulating of materials.
For Ethan's activity I used a large circular tray with a middle section for the acorns. Then I found some cute little cupcake cases with a leafy pattern that I wrote the numbers from 1 to 10 inside and placed them around the tray.
For Ivy's activity I used another large circular tray and put all of the acorns in the middle. I gave her some silicone cupcake cases to sort the acorns into as they're sturdier and she always loves to play with them in other activities.
I explained to Ethan that he needed to count out the acorns into each of the cups and asked him to identify the numbers for me before he got started. He told me what each number was and set out straight away putting one acorn into the first case, and two into the second and making his way around.
Ivy was straight in there picking up the acorns and placing them into the cases. I encouraged her to count them out (she's not yet counting to 10 but she does try to say some of the numbers along with me when we say them in a sing song voice.) I also encouraged her to look for the different types of acorns, putting all of the brown ones together and all of the green ones in a different case.
Ethan finished up counting the acorns into the different cupcake cases and was happily finished and very proud of his achievement. He was then done and went on to play with something else, but Ivy continued to play for ages moving her acorns around from one case to another. Her activity was much more open ended and she really enjoys that sort of movement and could happily pick up the acorns over and over again.
We really enjoyed counting with acorns today, and may just try the same thing in a few weeks when we start to find conkers on the ground!
This post is part of a blog hop with a bunch of fantastic other bloggers who have been writing about fun fall activities, pop by their blogs to check out what they've been doing!
From left to right:
Halloween Words // The Pleasantest Thing
Fall Leaves In and Out Activity // Still Playing School
Pumpkin Alphabet Puzzles // Modern Preschool
Sunflower Playdough Mats for the Numbers 1-10 // Life Over Cs
Fall Leaves Quiet Book // Teach My Mommy
Pumpkin Count and Clip Cards // Playdough to Plato
Apple Fine Motor Play // Adventures of Adam
Free Fall Themed Mazes // Powerful Mothering
Free Pumpkin Colors Booklet // Stay At Home Educator
Fall Nature I Spy Bottle // Mama. Papa. Bubba.
Fall Alphabet // Preschool Inspirations
Fine Motor Spider // Coffee Cups and Crayons
Pete the Cat Pumpkin // Think Magnet
Fall Interactive Book // Liz's Early Learning Spot
Free Pumpkin Number Mats // The Kindergarten Connection
Fall Playdough Busy Bag // Frogs Snails and Puppy Dog Tails
Counting with Acorns // Play and Learn Everyday
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