Math Games Monday - Love Birds

 Happy Monday!

I decided to do a series of Math Games Mondays for preschoolers.  I was talking to a former classmate who is in the international banking field.  She said, "I think I like preschool math the best - you get to "subtract" M&Ms. Sounds yummy to me!"

Preschool math is sooo important and easy to come up with ideas.  I saw these bird cutouts at my local Dollar Tree dollar store along with the acrylic hearts and an idea sparked!

I simply added a large number to each one and the number word under it.  Add a cup to contain the hearts and wa-la! you have the Love Birds math game.

Easy peasy, right?  You could do duplicate this game a million zillion times using any kind of cutouts that you find.  I had a set for each letter (monkey cutouts for M day, frog cutouts for F day, etc) when I taught preschool.  They got beat up some by all the little hands using them, but these games are cheap to make.

So the child takes a Love Bird. He can read the number or you can read it to him.  Then, he takes one heart at a time and places it on the bird cutout until he reaches the right number.  It is important for the child to count each heart that he places on there and physically slides or places the heart on the bird.  This is one-to-correspondence - an important preschool skill.

The child may need help and that's okay - it's bonding time.  He may want to add too many or not enough.  Just say, "Let's count together."  You can model counting each heart individually.  Children learning by watching us.  :)

Play as long (or short) as he wants.  The idea is to keep it fun and light.  It'll be so fun that they won't even know they are learning.  That is how children learn - by playing.

This game teaches number recognition, number word recognition, one-to-one correspondence, the value of each number, and counting.

Happy Monday & Happy Playing!
Mel