Counting with Eggs

Now Little Man's speech has really started to come on I have noticed that his numeracy knowledge may be slightly behind and this is some thing i will be trying to focus more on this year. Last week I bought 60 plastic eggs!! I have loads of ideas on how to use these and one is to introduce a maths game to Little Man.

Resources:

Plastic eggs

Buttons or pom pom's 

Permanent marker pen

Before introducing the activity tray to Little man I wrote the number and the matching amount of spots of the other half of the egg. 

The eggs were then broken up and placed in a tray with lots of buttons. When little man came over he asked me what he should do and I asked him it he could first of all match the numbers. 

With some help to count them out we then went on to fill the eggs with buttons matching the number on the plastic egg. Little man was great at this and the more egg's we did the more his confidence grew. By the time we got to the last two he was able to do it by him self. 

The activity also helped him develop his pincer grip as some of the buttons were quite smaller. We discussed the different sizes of buttons and he was also encouraged to talk about which eggs were full and empty. So there was a lot of opportunity during the activity to involve maths. 

 At the end of the activity when I felt i had covered as much as I had hoped to gain from it, Little man decided to fill the eggs up as much as he could and  use them as musical shakers.

If you would like to explore more craft ideas with eggs please check out this weeks hang out above featuring Maggy from Red Ted Art demonstrating how to hollow out real eggs as well as sharing some fun ideas, Missie Lizzie with her beautiful Egg Seed Bombs, Rebecca from Here Come the Girls sharing her gift idea of Bath bombs and Anthea from Zing Zing Tree with her treat filled eggs.