Counting bears are a great tool for learning colors, counting, sorting, adding and subtracting. We got a great little book at Target for $3 with 10 counting bears and a book with it to help inspire. The book has math problems like "3 yellow bears got on the bus at Cindy's house, 1 purple bear got on at John's house, 2 green bears got on at Juan's house. How many bears are on board?" Then goes on to say something about 2 yellow bears getting off the bus at the library, how many are on board? There are about 20 different pages with different problems.
Both girls are able to do the putting the bears on the bus part. Daphne then prefers to send them all flying. Naomi can count them all. This is a great activity for learning to following directions as well.
You don't need to go buy counting bears to be able to do this at home. Here are some other examples of things you may have around the house already. We've also used our jungle animals and our books to improvise this activity. We have a few great books with outdoor scenes that we put the animals in. I'll say "put 2 zebras, 3 giraffes and a hippo in the watering hole" and then we count how many there are total.
When playing "kitchen" or "restaurant" you can add this little game. Most of you have colored spoons, forks, bowls, plates, etc. Just ask for a certain number set at your table and then count how many pieces total you have. Do some subtraction as well. Play food will be a great addition to this game too. Not all learning experiences have to be like "school." The kids can learn while playing and not even know it.
A while ago we made a bunch of bean bags. I sewed some scrap fabric in 4X4 inch squares, turned them and the girls filled them with beans. Then I sewed up the opening. Easy. There are tons of things you can do with bean bags but counting is one of them. I used a bunch of different fabrics so we have 5 different patterns for our bean bags. Here are some of them.
I'll share some more bean bag ideas in another post.
