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| Image Credit: Abundant Family Living |
I have a younger group of daycare kids this year so I’m having to make
adjustments to keep our activities age appropriate. I have a couple of
small babies here every day so setting aside time for constructive
learning activities is challenging. Most of the time, I have to keep
our activities simple. I need activities that don’t take a whole lot of
time. This week, I thought of a way to teach numbers with simple apple
puzzles.
I used the solid red, green, and yellow apples from last week’s sorting activity to make simple apple puzzles.
Make Simple Apple Puzzles
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| Image Credit: Abundant Family Living |
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| Image Credit: Abundant Family Living |
I divided the apples into quarters.
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| Image Credit: Abundant Family Living |
I wrote the number “1” on the upper left hand corner of one apple. I
drew one dot on the upper right hand corner of the apple. I recorded 1
tally mark on the lower left hand quarter of the apple. I wrote the
number “one” on the lower right hand quarter of the apple. I did the
same thing for the numbers 2 – 10.
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| Image Credit: Abundant Family Living |
I cut the apples into 4 pieces.
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| Image Credit: Abundant Family Living |
We practiced putting the puzzles together. We worked on number recognition, counting the dots and tally marks, and recognizing number words.
We repeated this activity over and over again. These kids are between 2
and 3 years old so I chose to use no more than three number apples at a
time. We didn’t focus on number order yet. We focused on recognizing
that numbers have meaning. I wanted the kids to realize that each
number stands for something. The kids learned that each number
represents an amount.
You might also like: Apple Sorting for Preschoolers
