Preschool Mommy

This is an activity that's super-fun, but is also really good for number recognition.

First, I cut up blank index cards and numbered them 1-5. These were the "tickets." I made enough that every child in my class could have 5 tickets, but my class is small so this worked. (With a bigger class, it might be best to hand each child only a couple of tickets and rotate). Then I wrote the numbers 1-5 on full index cards.

For the activity, I told the children that we would be riding the number train, and handed out tickets. I held up my large ticket for number 1, and said "Boarding train number one. " Then I collected the children's tickets while doing the whole train conductor thing - saying "all aboard" and stuff like that. The children made a train by holding onto the shoulders of the person in front of them. I was the engine, and the children were the cars. We went once around the room making train noises, then stopped back at the "station" (i.e. blocks center) where the passengers on train #1 got off. This process was repeated over and over until all the trains (1-5) were boarded.

It was a ton of fun and the children wanted to do it over and over again.