This was a very basic activity that I decided to use today in order to help my younger son try to become somewhat motivated to learn his numbers by sight. It was vaguely successful, although any non-success can be attributed to my son's lack of interest, rather than the effectiveness of the activity.
Either way, it's easy and fun and yummy.
I just so happened to have some leftover sour gummy worms (left over from making that recipe where you create dirt out of oreo's...you know the one). ANYway. I had some leftover and I thought it would be fun to use them in a counting exercise. So after a little thought, I grabbed my scissors and green construction paper and cut out 10 leaves. I wrote numbers 1-10, one on each leaf. Then I dumped a big pile of the gummy worms on the table and rounded up the kids.
It didn't take much imagination for them to believe that the worms, previously used as worms, were now caterpillars. Hungry caterpillars--no less--who wanted to be put on leaves. I told them that the leaves were picky and only wanted a certain number of caterpillars on them. So they had to put the amount of caterpillars on the leaf that would match it's number. Savvy? "Savvy" they said.
My older son was done with his leaves (I gave him 6-10) in a flash and ran away until I told him he could come back and gobble some of the caterpillars. But my younger son, who needed much coaching from myself, struggled to comprehend the idea of corresponding amounts with numbers. We worked on it for quite a while. Repetition works...right?
Finally, I told them they could pick a leaf and eat all the caterpillars on it, "so which one would you choose?" I asked.
That last part was not the best idea I ever had.
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