Numeracy Activities for Easter

What we are all in need of right now is a splash of colour!

And you're in luck, I have that here for you!

If you're like me and you live in a snowy northern country, you've been staring at a pretty bleak and bland landscape for the last few months. I've been desperate to see SOME semblance of spring sprouting somewhere. Alas, it's been snow, cold, and clouds... and then more snow and more cold and more clouds.

Anyways, in my desperation for spring and colour, I sourced these absolutely adorable (and FREE!) counting/numeracy activities from The Artisan Life for my daughter, Lilly! I will post the link further down if you want to get them for yourself and your littles!

There are sets that count up to 5 and sets that count up to 10, depending on where your child/students are at! Each set has a counting sheet with a perfectly paired graphing component to match! I'm going to show you how I made these into a fun hands-on learning activity today for my daughter.

You can see that the sets come with these lovely, whimsical watercolour illustrations to be counted and then the child/students somehow represent that number in the boxes below each item. Most mamas or teachers may choose to have their child/students write the number in the box but I chose to have my daughter represent the number with dice instead for the counting to 5 sheets.

Why Dice? Excellent question, sweet mama/teacher/reader!

I chose dice for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is that I wanted to be sure that I was working on the skill of counting, rather than writing. Sometimes for children who have trouble writing or who simply don't enjoy pen/paper activities, their focus will fade as soon as they realize their have to do some kind of writing so I opted for a manipulative item instead. My daughter loves anything she can roll, move, touch, feel, or manipulate in her hands, she's very tactile. The second reason I wanted to use dice is because using dice encourages the development of subitization which is helpful numeracy skill for preschool and kindergarten aged children whether they attend public, private, or home school.

Subitization is the skill of recognizing numbers without counting, like when you see the three dots on the die, you need not count them, you just know that that is the number three.

So she counted up the item shown and chose a die, found the correct number represented on the die and placed it in the box. Voila! Super cute and simple counting activity.

Now, for these perfectly paired graphing pages, again with pencils in hand one could simply shade in the number of items represented! Now don't get me wrong - there is nothing wrong with paper/pencil activities - they serve a purpose and have a place. I am simply hoping to inspire something a little different with this approach. I chose these cute Easter eggs we bought recently at Dollarama, but any item you have multiples of in different colours would do. After the counting is complete and accurate, the graphing can begin!

Graphing was new for my daughter today. Never been seen or done before. So I explained to her that graphing is a way of counting and showing how many we have counted. I first asked her to tell me how many sheep she counted. She told me 3. So I modelled placing an egg on each number as I counted up the graph... 1 (and placed an egg on number one)... 2 (and placed an egg on number two)... 3 (and placed an egg on number three). She took it from there.

After the graphing is complete, asking follow up questions can help students make sense of the numbers they are working with and help set the stage for analyzing and interpreting graphical data. Ask them things like:

1. Which item has the most (is the highest/tallest)?
2. Which item has the least (is the lowest/shortest)?
3. How many more carrots are there than eggs?

Natasha, at The Artisan Life, is another teacher turned homeschool mama and her materials are carefully crafted! Here is the link to her homepage and here is the link to the printables! You'll see a lot of posts that have her materials used in them here! There are so many options for how to use these FREE printable counting worksheets! You could use Bingo Dobbers for the graphing pages or you could use any other spring themed manipulative, or rocks or buttons. Whatever you have already will work just fine! I had some number tiles as well for the counting sheets that would work splendidly for number recognition, too!

I hope you and your littles enjoy this burst of colour and fun as much as we did!

Happy Counting!

-Ashley

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing below for first looks at new articles or consider pledging your support to my work here or leaving a tip. I appreciate all of my lovely readers! Thank you for taking time to read and grow with me.