Preschool Mommy

I got the printout for this on Makinglearningfun.com. The idea is the same. You place the number of goldfish crackers on the penguins belly to match the number on its fin. However, I wrote the number on its belly instead, and placed dots in specific spots on the numbers. Why did I do this? Well... as a child I remember being very frustrated when I was told that I couldn't count on my fingers so I developed my own system of counting on the actual numbers. This was something that helped me immensely as a child, and something I would like to pass on to my students. You see, by counting on the numbers the children are connecting the physical amount that the number represents to the numeric symbol. My hope is that this will help them to identify numbers, count using numbers, and as one parent pointed out, in the future write numbers.

Here is the sheet I made:

I told them we were feeding the penguins, and the the penguins needed the number of crackers listed on their bellies. I made sure to that the children were counting the fish as they placed them on the dots. The children really took to this activity. It might have been the fact that they got to eat the goldfish once they finished :)