Use children's love of trucks and cars to help them learn to recognize and count in preschool and kindergarten.
Preschoolers love trucks and cars. Very few children seem to be able to resist their appeal making them perfect for inviting some hands-on playful learning to your classroom or for learning at home.
I've created this printable pack of transport themed resources to help build number sense in preschool and kindergarten age children while they play. The main focus being quantity as they work to 'load up' their trucks.
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Preschool may be the first place children learn about number as not all families exchange in rich math talk at home.
What does that mean? Take this conversation between a mum and her child 👉🏼
'Look at the cats! So cute!' v 'Look at the two cats! So cute!'
There's little difference between the two versions but one frames it as a mathematical experience. Sensitizing children to numbers during their Early Years build important connections.
Talking about number during everyday tasks helps children connect the word to a specific quantity 👉🏼 'I found three socks in the dryer'
Teachers and parents both need to be aware and alert to opportunities to name small groups of people or objects whenever is appropriate.
At preschool and at home creating opportunities for children to group objects is another important task. The value in using concrete items at this stage cannot be understated and should not be rushed through. Children need this time working with concrete objects to grasp abstract concepts such as the relationship between a number and an object.
With the invitation children could just count practice counting 1:1 the cars on each poster or grab some cars to make an amount to match. Both are valuable tasks in different ways but the child is the one deciding what skill they wish to focus on.
Learning that these numbers have an order is also an important step.
Leaving them in a pile can be enough to invite children to sequence them. I typically will have some other number posters on display to help guide the children to be successful with this task while they are still becoming familiar with the numbers.
One of the most important concepts about quantity and number children take time to master is the idea that when counting, the last word tells us how many.
You'll often see young children count out objects - 1, 2, 3, 4 touching each as they count but if you ask them 'How many?' they will re-count the objects again to answer.
You'll often see young children count out objects - 1, 2, 3, 4 touching each as they count but if you ask them 'How many?' they will re-count the objects again to answer.
As we introduce numbers, simple invitations like this provide helpful practice as children work to make the amount on each mat.
This time we used small rocks but you could also used LEGO, blocks, sticks, anything that might be loaded up on the back of a truck.
This time we used small rocks but you could also used LEGO, blocks, sticks, anything that might be loaded up on the back of a truck.
Want to encourage some co-operative play? Or introduce math tools like ten frames for organising numbers? Swap to these blank mats and pair them with some work orders for numbers to ten.
Add some hard hats, a few safety vests and a clip board or two and even the most reluctant learner will find it hard to resist these invitations!
One child can load up their truck then needs to ask a friend to check off their work.
For this invitation we still used our construction vehicle mats but if you are lucky enough to have a block area why not add these work orders to that area along with some real toy trucks to load up ready for delivery.
Or take the play outside to your sand pit and count up the scoops of sand into your trucks.
As you can see this printable pack of transport themed resources has provided plenty of opportunities for purposeful math-rich play at kindergarten.
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