Shelly brightens up learning maths skills by using the cheerful Count the Petals printout from Activity Village in this guest blog post.
Count the Petals Maths Activities
By Shelly
A few weeks ago I stumbled upon this Count the Petals printout and I just loved it. It is exactly the kind of printout I would have used with my daughter when she was younger (she loves flowers and bright colours). So I thought I would share a few ideas on how I would have used them.
They are designed as matching cards and they would work really well as such. The kids just need to count the petals and then match the picture to the correct number.
Count the Petals matching cards
You could also turn them into a little flap activity. When both of mine where younger they loved any activity that involved lifting up a flap. All you need to do is glue the very top of the flower to its number, and then once the kids have counted the petals they can lift the flap and see if they got the correct number.
Making a flip flap activity from the matching cards
And, of course, you could use them with one of our favourite maths activities – bean bag maths. Lay the flower cards out on the floor and the kids throw a bean bag. If the bean bag lands on or near a flower they need to count the petals. If the kids are a bit older you can extend this into an addition activity where they throw two bean bags and then add the two numbers together.
Throw the bean bag and count the petals
My kids have always enjoyed maths where they can move a little and using the bean bag allows them to move their body while they are practicing.
As much we love flaps and bean bags, just looking at the stunning flower pictures made me want to reach for some craft sticks!
Count the petal flowers glued onto craft sticks
I love the way these flowers look glued onto the craft sticks.
You could use the craft stick flowers "as is" and create some sums. It is a great way of introducing addition as they kids can count all the petals together to get the total.
Using count the petal flowers for addition practice
Seeing the flowers on the craft sticks made me reach for some play dough. I just wanted to “plant “ our flowers in some play dough! I remember my daughter actually did a similar activity when she was younger, combining some flower craft sticks with play dough, and it kept her busy for ages designing her own garden. At the time I never thought of asking her to count the petals but it would have been such a good idea. The kids could create multiple little flower beds and then count how many flowers or how many petals are in each flower bed.
Adding the petals together of all the flowers in a flower bed
They could also create odd and even number flower beds.
Creating odd and even petal flower beds
Or match together flowers that make up a certain number. Or even create a line of flowers going from the fewest number of petals to the largest number of petals.
Order the flowers from smallest to largest number of petals
And of course if they have younger siblings around, you can always get them involved by creating flower beds of certain coloured flowers.
I really love these flowers. They are so cheerful! And I love maths activities where the kids can pick items up, play around, move items, then recount, move them again and recount. That always seems to be the type of maths activities that my two enjoyed the most.
This is a guest post from Shelly. Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 8 and 10. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on the different learning activities that they do including lots of hand-on maths, arts and crafts and anything else that is part of their home educating lifestyle.
You can find more guest posts by Shelly, and a list of all our guest posts, here.