Roll & Count Gold on a Rainbow

Did you know that leprechauns make shoes for fairies who in turn pay them with gold which leprechauns hide at the end of the rainbow?

So, today, we made a St. Patricks’ Day inspired DIY to reinforce numeral to quantity association. First, Adrian made a paper plate rainbow craft using these stick paints. He then rolls the dice and places gold coins (one at a time) on a rainbow as he counts coins aloud. We are also tracing in cloud dough (mix 1 cup of flour + 1 oz of oil) and forming numbers from green marbles while reinforcing tactile learning!

There are just three rules: touch each coin as you count, count numerals aloud and proceed left to right. Ready, Set, Go!

A TIP: even if your little one counts till one hundred, don’t underestimate the power of repetition and drilling numbers one through ten (the base of any number formation). By Kindergarten, our children are expected to understand the relationship between numbers and quantities. Quantity is understanding the number’s name (and it’s written symbol) and relating that name (e.i. 3 to an actual number of objects e.i. three coins. To adults, cardinality is quite obvious, but to a child, who may just memorize numbers’ order like a heart-learned poem without actually understanding a true meaning, it is not as simple. They may just know that five comes after four without correlating that a written symbol ‘4’ means actually 4 of something ~ four of objects. There is a difference between counting or a written symbol of the numeral and quantity …and that needs to be practiced again and again.

Please, always supervise your children while they are learning through play … Xoxo

See this post on Instagram here.

For more St Patrick’s fun activities for toddlers and preschoolers, see here St. Patrick’s Day Inspired Unit Study.