Spot The Cow Game
Builds on: counting skills, number recognition, finger strengthening

What you'll need:
Large side view print of a plain cow
1 large Ziploc freezer bag
1 tub of black playdoh
number cards 1-30

What to do:

Place the picture of the cow inside the Ziploc bag and zip it up. Place everything on to the activity table and sit across from your little. Explain that you're going to pick a number out of the number cards and your little is going to decide what number it is and make the same number of spots on the cow using small pinches of playdoh.

If you're new to counting and number recognition your going show a number 1-10 to your kiddo. Give them a minute to remember and help if they can't. Then count out loud together as playdoh spots are added to the cow.

The Carrot Seed Farm

The Carrot Seed Farm
Builds on: math, color recognition, fine motor skills

What you'll need:
1 empty cardboard egg carton
green, purple, yellow and orange pipe cleaners
wire cutters
large exacto knife
The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
* optional: 1 bag of Rainbow Carrots from the health food store

What to do:

Turn the egg carton over so that the egg cups are facing up. Use the exacto knife to cut and X into the center of each cup. Use a pencil to force the X open a little more.

Use the wire cutters to cut the all the pipe cleaners into 2 inch pieces. To create a carrot take a green pipe cleaner and a purple pipe cleaner fold them each in half. Twist the two ends of the purple pipe cleaner together to so that you have a loop at the folded end and a point at the twisted end. Finally, thread the green pipe cleaner through the loop of the purple pipe cleaner and twist close to the loop leaving the ends untwisted for the stocks of the carrots. Repeat with all of your other colors until you have 12. Let your Roo have a shot at it to improve their fine motor skills and hand dexterity.

Once you have them all made push the pointed ends through the holes of the egg cups and place it on the activities table. Once you've read The Carrot Seed you can let your Roo pull out all of the carrots and put them back in. Challenge them with color sorting, counting or color pattern questions.

My favorite part about this activity is that kids always comment that carrots are only orange. I get to pull out Rainbow Carrots and explain that there are lots of different colors for carrots and at snack we test all of the different colors to see if they taste any different from the typical orange ones.

Addition activities:

Follow the links below for some of some more carrot activities, by some other awesome bloggers, to go allow with The Carrot Seed

Soda Bottle Carrots: A Very Small Kitchen Garden
Spring Sensory Tub With Carrots
Carrot Fingers
Preschool Carrot Patch Math Activity

Candy Corn and Pumpkin Patterns

Builds on: fine motor, sequencing

 

What you'll need:

25 pumpkin candy

25 candy corn

a shallow dish

What to do:

Mix the candies together and place it in a shallow dish. Sit with your kiddo and create a pattern with the corns and pumpkins like pumpkin, corn, corn, pumpkin. Instruct your little to repeat the pattern underneath. See if your Roo can figure out what would come next in the pattern if it were to continue.

If your kiddo is new to patterns you should start will simple patterns such as corn, corn, pumpkin or a longer row of a simple repeating pattern like pumpkin corn, pumpkin, corn, pumpkin, corn.Then build up from there as they start to get it. You can do longer lines or turn the corn to point different directions to make a pattern that has them pointing up, right, up, left, pumpkin (repeat).