Your preschooler is probably getting excited about Halloween and everything related to this fun holiday. Here are a few math activities that will help your child work on her counting and shape recognition, while also helping her build up the motor skills she’ll need when it’s time to start cutting out paper.
1. Make a pumpkin out of construction paper. Have your child cut out circles of varying sizes from orange construction paper. These will be her pumpkin’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Then, have her glue the circles onto a large piece of orange or green construction paper in whatever arrangement she wants.
2. Create a pumpkin pie for your child to count out pieces of candy corn “on.” Start by cutting out a circle from yellow construction paper (this will be the pie) and then cutting that circle into 10 different wedges (these will be the “pieces” of pie). Then, count out 10 pieces of candy corn with your child and have him glue each piece onto one wedge of the “pie.”
3. Draw 10 ghosts on white construction paper with black markers and/or crayons (you can do this step without your child). Then, write a number underneath each ghost between 1 and 10
Pumpkin Decoration: The kids can decorate a small pumpkin using shapes. Using different colors of construction paper, cut out circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, and any other shapes that your preschoolers may be familiar with. Then have them glue the shapes onto their pumpkin in whatever design they like. You can also have them create a ghost using the shapes by having them glue circles for eyes on top of an upside down triangle for a mouth.
Counting and sorting Halloween candies: You can also have them put the candies in order from smallest to biggest. For example, you could put five pieces of candy corn, ten pieces of chocolate, and fifteen pieces of jelly beans on a plate and have the preschoolers sort through it to count how many there are of each item and then put them in order from smallest to biggest amount of candies.
Painting pumpkins or draw pictures of pumpkins while you tell stories about what they are doing at that moment in time – this helps develop their storytelling.
