Games are a great way to learn early math skills! They are fun and engaging and make counting fun.
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This week we have been learning about wild safari animals with our Going on Safari unit from Experience Early Learning. Today we learned about giraffes. They live in the dry savannas of Africa. We found Africa on our map again. They are the world's tallest land mammal and their long neck and tongue help pull down leaves from the trees. The shapes on their coat are all unique! We have talked a lot about how we are unique, just like the animals we are learning about.
At our math center today, to go along with our giraffe topic from our Experience Preschool curriculum, we played a game. We used a giraffe poster, giraffe spots game cards and bingo chips. We talked about what a giraffe's coat looks like and decided that the giraffe on our poster needed some spots.
I asked them to find a number (to help with our number recognition) and they placed it on the poster. They used 1:1 correspondence to count out that many spots for the giraffe. This game was a great way to help with their understanding of the relationship between written numbers and quantities.
For students that needed this simplified, I identified the number with them, handed them the right number of chips, and together we counted out the number of spots they were placing on the giraffe.
I love how easily you can simplify or challenge your students with this activity. My preschoolers enjoyed this game today!
