My middle son is currently in his last year of preschool before starting kindergarten next fall. I absolutely LOVE the preschool program he’s in, as well as his teacher. In a recent conversation, his teacher shared with me that he tends to have troubles with one to one correspondence when counting. In other words, when he’s counting objects sometimes he skips an object, or counts an object twice. To help my son work on one to one correspondence at home, I came up with an easy Thanksgiving counting activity for him.
One to One Correspondence Preschool Counting Thanksgiving Activity
One of my fondest childhood memory was of my mom making play dough at home. While we could easily have gone to the store and bought some play dough, there was just something special about my mom making play dough for me and my sister. I’ve been wanting create this same memory for my boys, so when I was thinking of one to one correspondence activities for my son, I thought of a one that incorporated play dough!
With Thanksgiving coming up in a week, I wanted to make play dough that smelled like pumpkin pie. A quick search, and I found this perfect Pumpkin Pie Play Dough recipe.
Supplies:
Instructions:
Step 1: I asked my son to roll a large piece of play dough into a ball. I loved this part because the play dough smells so good!
Step 2: Next I asked him to write the number eight on the small chalkboard.
Step 3: Last, I asked him to poke eight feathers into the play dough, counting as he did it.
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Step 4: We repeated steps 2 and 3 numbers with the rest of the numbers down to 1.
Such a simple little activity, but my son absolutely loved it! And as an added bonus, my youngest started poking feathers into play dough as well, working on his fine motor skills. Win-win!
Impromptu Science while Making Play Dough
A little off topic, but when we made the play dough, I was able to talk to my third grader about phase changes of mixtures. He helped me mix all the ingredients of the play dough. We talked about how it was a liquid, and I asked him how he thought I could turn it into a semi-solid. As he had only learned that liquids turn to solids by freezing, he told me to put it in the freezer. I told him I was going to cook it, and call him when it was ready. Imagine his surprise when a few minutes later the liquid had turned into a semi-solid by adding heat!
I explained to him that mixtures behave different than a pure substance (like water). In our play dough mixture, most of the water boiled off which left us with the remaining ingredients all mixed together with a little bit of water. He thought it was neat, and also enjoyed playing with the play dough with his brothers. Just goes to show you, you’re never to “big” to play with play dough!
Inspire preschoolers with my other STEM ideas and activities just for them!
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