At first I found it took a lot of thinking to come up with small tasks to encourage and develop learning particularly maths. Then it occurred to me that numbers are everywhere.
We go for a walk almost every day, usually this is a short round the corner to the park, but we do try and get out for at least 30 minutes. Last week we came across a really big conifer tree right around the corner. Eagle began picking them up and I decided we should make it into a counting game, so we collected all the pinecones we could see and made a big pile.
There are 15 pinecones here, although if you ask Eagle he will tell you there are 7. Seven seems to be his go to number, maybe his lucky number?
It is wonderful to watch him count and he can confidently count in order up to ten so maybe next time I wont overload him and keep it simple.
He enjoyed collecting and ordering the physical material and I really think this helped him to focus on the counting. We now try to find things we can count every time we are outside.
We are very lucky to be surrounded with parks. Eagle is so gentle with the flowers and now he enjoys counting them too!
To extend this activity further we have been to the beach to collect rocks. I plan on presenting them as Montessori inspired shelf activities, counting, sorting, cleaning, ect. I think that bringing nature indoors can work wonderfully especially on days when it may be more difficult to get out.
Happy Counting guys!
LSF 🌱
Little Simple Family {LSF} 