Rainbow Fish Math

Welcome to everyone joining in with the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp this week is Water Play and we’ve been reading a wonderful book by Marcus Pfister The Rainbow Fish.

With the story based around a fish giving away scales from his body it was a perfect opportunity for some maths. J who is entering full time school in the autumn is very interested in numbers and has started to do some sums so we got crafty and doing some math at the same time.

Read Next: More Fish Themed Books for Toddlers and Preschoolers

First off we started to create some rainbow fish – I drew some rough fish outlines on some card stock and provide J and T with a selection of rainbow coloured paint to create their rainbow fish with.

I sat down with them and my water colour paints and using the same roughly drawn fish created my own rainbow fish as well – I don’t normally paint alongside the children but they loved it – it’s the first time I’ve got out water colours and teaching them how to use them was great.

We then let the rainbow fish dry and returned the next day to cut out scales for the rainbow fish – using foil cupcake cases J cut up 10 scales for his fish and I helped T cut up and tear some more. T is almost 2 and a half and we are working on scissor skills with her.

Once all scales were cut we got out our magnetic numbers and I set out a “sum” for J talking about it – we started off with 10 scales on our Rainbow Fish and “Gave Away” 4 scales to another fish.

Whilst J counted out his 4 scales and gave to another fish with T she counted out scales for her fish – counting out between 1 and 5 scales each time.

Once we had worked on subtraction we then added some scales to the fish and then did some more subtractions from the new number.