Halloween Counting

Little Bear has been loving dot markers lately so I thought it would be nice to have a seasonal learning activity that used them. My amazing co-blogger, Cassidy, made up this cute little Halloween do-a-dot counting activity and Little Bear loved it. Cassidy’s niece stars in the pictures, but I’ll be writing about Little Bear. Sorry it’s so confusing!

First, Little Bear asked me if he could use an orange dot marker. We don’t have one so I told him that we don’t have one. He was a little disappointed since the circles aren’t just circles, but are Jack-o-Lanterns. So, I told him we could try dotting the circle with a yellow dot marker first and then dot it again with a red dot marker. I did not think this would work because our red dot marker lets out a lot more paint than our yellow dot marker. Unfortunately, I was right. The color mixing of the dot markers did not work. We used the Walmart Paint Dab Markers. If any of you have tried different dot markers and have successfully color mixed, I would love to hear about it.

Once we got past the whole no orange dot marker thing, Little Bear was ready to start counting. He dotted the first group of pumpkins and counted each one out loud as he dotted them. Once he knew how many pumpkins were in that first group, he wrote the correct number in the little box next to them.

Little Bear’s preschool table has the numbers written on the side, so if he ever needed help remembering what a number looked like, I just told him to look at his table. This turned out to be very helpful.

This Halloween dot marker counting activity was really awesome because it gave Little Bear practice writing numbers and it helped solidify the concept of one-to-one correspondence. It was much easier for Little Bear to count each object once and only once because he could see if he had counted it or not. Little Bear has been pretty good at counting for several months now, but this dot marker activity helped him to understand why each number should be counted once and only once. Plus, since the dot markers were involved, it was extra fun!