Introducing math concepts in a hands-on and meaningful way is sure to get your little ghosts and goblins excited about numbers! In this post, I share my tried and true Halloween math activities for preschoolers.
HALLOWEEN ACTIVITIES FOR PRESCHOOLERS: MATH TIPS
Use Halloween candy, costumes, pumpkins, trinkets or anything else you can think of when planning math activities for preschoolers. They’ll have a ton of fun with these seasonal items and may never even realize you are targeting some very important pre-math skills.
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MATH ACTIVITIES TO ADD TO YOUR HALLOWEEN LESSON PLANS
All of these ideas require minimal prep and shouldn’t cost you a lot of money in supplies. Get creative, dig through your Halloween bins, swing by the dollar store and most importantly, keep it simple.
HALLOWEEN MATH ACTIVITY #1: PUMPKIN SORTING
- REAL PUMPKINS OF VARYING SIZES (alternative: cut out paper pumpkins of varying sizes instead)
- 3 PAPER SIGNS THAT READ: “SMALL”, “MEDIUM” AND “LARGE”
- MARKER
VERSION #1: Show the kids your 3 signs (small, medium, large) and talk about what each one says. Present the pumpkins (paper or real) of various sizes to the kids. Ask the kids to sort the pumpkins into three groups: small, medium and large. When you are finished, talk about which group has the most? Which has the least?
VERSION #2: Show the kids your 3 signs (small, medium, large) and talk about what each one says. Present the pumpkins (paper or real) of various sizes to the kids. Ask the kids to line up the pumpkins from smallest to biggest (or biggest to smallest). Encourage teamwork and problem solving.
KEEPING YOUR CLIENTS INFORMED BY SAYING THIS:
Dear Parents,
Today we had fun working with different sizes of pumpkins! First we focused on an early math skill known as “seriation“. That’s just a fancy word for comparing more than two objects and putting them in a logical order. One day it will help us understand that numbers can also go in order. Next, we organized our pumpkins by size and used words like “small, medium and large” to help us. This is known as “classification“; grouping items in a logical way…in this case it was by size.
COUNTING WITH CANDY CORN
Set up a workstation tray . Place a small dish of candy corn in the middle. Place foam pumpkin cut-outs no the tray and assign a number to each one. Kids can count out the candy corn to match the number on the pumpkin.
Dear Parents,
Today we worked on some 1:1 counting using candy corn. This activity covered so many skills in a short amount of time! First, recognizing the written number on the pumpkin (number recognition), then counting out the number of candy corn to match (1:1 correspondence).
Looking ahead to November? Try this great table manners game to help kids prepare for the Thanksgiving Feast!
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I love these activities! I also ❤️ the photo of everyone dressed up! I will pin this!