Snowman Math – Count and Peg

It’s another week of #playfulpreschool and this week’s theme is Snowmen – a favourite Winter theme for preschoolers. Each week the playful preschool bloggers are sharing learning, creating and skill-building activities based around a popular theme. Our Snowman-based activity this week is Snowman Math – Count and Peg.

If you want to discover more then check out #playfulpreschool on social media and find out what we are up to, including some occasionally sneaky peeks at next week’s activities.

This week we are working on maths and fine motor skills, combining the two in an adult-led activity that’s fun to set up together and is cute as well. One-to-one correspondence is a step further on than counting by rote.  Your child may be able to count out loud from 1 to 10 or 20, but are they relating those numbers to counting or just saying them from memory.  Activities that match objects or that have them counting out are a great for teaching them that the number words they know have significance, and move onwards to further maths skills.

Materials needed for Snowman Math – Count and Peg

Snowflake Punch
White or Silver Mirror Card
Blue or Black Card

Wooden Clothes Pegs
White, Black, Orange and another colour Card
Glue
Scissors

Learning Objectives

• Work on 1 to 1 correspondence counting
• Fine Motor Skills

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Read this next – Hands-on Counting Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers

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Preparation

I involved T in the preparation as she loves drawing, cutting and sticking however, you could prepare this in advance and just do the activity with your child.

First punch out the snowflakes.  We are working on numbers 1 to 10 so we punched out 55 snowflakes.

With the snowflakes punched, T then stuck them onto the blue (or black) card with the first card having 1 snowflake on, 2nd card 2, 3rd card 3 etc…

To make the Snowman Pegs, I used 10 pegs. In the UK our snowmen are made out of 2 body parts so I used my cookie cutters and different sized circles. Onto white card I traced around the different sized circles (if you have 2 different sized circle punches these would be excellent to use instead).

 

Once drawn T started to cut them out and then got bored so I ended up cutting them out. With them cut,  stick the two body pieces together.

Now the snowmen needed hats – good top hats were decided upon by T so we drew and cut these out of black card.

 

She then added orange noses which I cut out and a purple scarf for around the neck.

With the accessories added to the snowmen we glued them to the clothes pegs.

Snowman Count and Peg

Start off with counting the number of snowflakes on each card – I had helped T to arrange the snowflakes into a the pattern similar to dots on a dice (this helps to build on number pattern recognition) so I asked to first how many dots, and then asked her to count the dots to verify the number she thought.

Once we had the number of snowflakes, we counted out the number of snowmen, and then I showed her how to open and close the pegs.

She then matched the number of snowflakes to the number of snowmen.

Then moved onto another card matching the snowmen to the number of the snowflakes on the card.

Other great Snowmen Learning Activities

If you’ve liked our Snowman Math – Count and Peg Activity, check out these other fabulous ideas from the #playfulpreschool team on the theme of Snowmen.

Snowman Literacy Activities for Preschool:

Snowman Math Activities for Preschool:

Snowman Sensory and Creative Exploration Activities for Preschool:

Snowman Snack Ideas: