Holiday Counting Exercise

This time next year, Brooks will be a preschooler. I cannot believe it.

I’m lucky to have a lot of educators in my life who can tell me a little bit about what to expect and how best to prepare my child. But, I often find myself wondering, “What else can I do to best prepare him?”

I try to inject learning into our day - lots of reading, counting stairs as we go, life skills, etc. It’s hard to create a fun and engaging activity when I am also trying to wrangle my newly walking one year old. That’s where Education.com comes in!

Their education resources are top notch…and fun! Brooks and I embarked on a Counting to 5 Challenge in a festive way with Education.com’s Lend a Hand activity.

So grab the finger paints, scrapbooking Holiday stickers, some markers, and a little glitter glue (it didn’t go everywhere, I promise), and let’s get to work!

Basically, each element of the tree will have 5 parts so that each time you can decorate your tree you can encourage your child to count to five. You start with a simple hand print, then 5 strands of glitter glue tinsel, then 5 ornaments, then a 5 pointed star on top of the tree and finally 5 presents underneath the tree.

Aside from being a simple activity that requires little prep time and clean up, the best part is that you can tweak this activity based on what you have around your house. I didn’t have glitter glue, so I used regular Elmer’s glue and glitter. If you don’t have glitter you can wait until the glue dries and then paint it with your finger paints. There’s always a workaround so you don’t have to run to Wal-Mart with your whole army in tow mid-activity.

I thought that the repetition of counting every element would bore Brooks, but he loved it. We started with “one, two, three, two, four” and by the end we could get to five easily.

I’m really encouraged by the ease of this activity and the results. We will definitely be printing off a few more activities and worksheets from Education.com!

And I’m sure that Brooks will be well prepared for preschool, even if I’m not!