Maths activities for preschoolers work best when they are fun (of course!) and practical – using real objects the children can feel, rather than abstract numbers on a worksheet.
Try this fruit cocktail maths activity for some tasty number practice.
How to make a counting cocktail
1. Talk about the fruits that would be great in a fruit cocktail and have the children write or draw a list of possible ingredients.
2. Go shopping or raid the fruit bowl to find your ingredients and wash, peel and chop the fruit into pieces.
3. Recipe time. Have the children create their own fruit cocktail recipe and write or draw them out on a recipe card.
You could use a 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5 recipe, where the children must pick one of some kind of fruit, two of another, three of another, and so on.
Or use an ‘Adds up to ten’ recipe, where the children can pick any combination of fruits they like so long as they total ten pieces all together.
If you’re interested in colours, you could make the rule that they need five different colours in their cocktail.
If you’re interested in letters you could require that all the fruits in the recipe start with a different sound.
4. Eat and enjoy your bowl full of numbers.
You can find lots more preschool maths activities in our maths archive.
happily shared with tot school and preschool corner and smart summer for the kids Friday and it’s playtime
katepickle says
Fabulous ideas… especially good to get reluctant counters doing maths without even noticing it!
Cathy @ NurtureStore says
Yes katepickle, always useful to have some ideas to sneak in for reluctant kids. 😉
huana says
We’re making some icecream today,this will work on icecream to 🙂
Cathy @ NurtureStore says
Oh yum huana, ice cream maths sounds even better!
Jamie @ hands on : as we grow says
Sweet! I love ideas like this that can be manipulated to appropriate levels of learning! And a healthy snack too that they’d love to eat – because they did the creating!
Jackie says
I love these ideas and the variety of ways to play!
JDaniel4's Mom says
What a great way to introduce number and new fruits. This looks like a lot of fun.
amy @teachmama says
Love how simple and on-the-fly this activity can be, my friend! And I love that it’s involving healthy foods for our kids!
The Princess and the Tot says
I love real life math! This is a fun idea for little ones – and it’s healthy!
Stefanie says
Great activity. We will be doing this one for sure.
Just popping in from tot school.
Cathy @ NurtureStore says
Thanks for stopping by Stefanie 🙂
Candace @Naturally Educational says
What clever ideas! Thank you for sharing at the Smart Summer Challenge!
Cathy @ NurtureStore says
A pleasure Candace 🙂
Emma @sciencesparks says
That is a great idea! My little boy would love this! He adores fruit and numbers!
Emma @MummyMummyMum says
Thats great. Healthy eating and learning at the same time. Fantastic! x
Home Tutoring Solutions|Home Tutoring|Maths Tutoring says
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