I am loving the fall weather we have been having this week! It gave me a chance to get outside with some special Kindergarten kids and do some play based math activities using natural materials. It was such a nice way to spend some time outside learning together!
We started by going on a little nature walk with a few buckets and picking up some beautiful leaves, acorns and pine-cones. Then we dumped our treasures out on the table, grabbed a few fine pointed sharpies and got to work exploring and adding some mathematical details to our fall materials. We started by writing numbers on leaves. Some kids wrote numbers to 10 while others wrote some random numbers they knew.
We have been doing a lot with the 10 frame model recently and I wanted to capitalize on this so I used some of the larger leaves to draw some 10 frames which led to a lot of ordering and matching activies.
Some kids are ready to look at addition and subtraction facts so we added leaves that had the symbols for +, - and = and they were able to use these with the numeral leaves and natural counters to create equations.
Many kindergartners need plenty of practice with one to one correspondence and matching objects to numerals. The acorns, pine-cones and number leaves let them have lots of experiences with this!
We put everything in a bin and brought it inside to explore for a few more day. The leaves will crinkle up along the edges and be unusable if you don't put something heavy on them when they are not in use. I forgot this important step and ended up replacing them with artificial leaves that I had left over from another project. These materials placed in a sensory bin or sand table will give your kiddos opportunities to revisit them over the following week.
To connect our outdoor exploration of natural materials, we made this fun fall themed number craft. This is a great way to reinforce many models and makes an excellent fall bulletin board display.
How are you embracing fall with your children or your class? Please respond in the comments below!
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