I love doing finger painting learning activities with my happy kindergartner ever since she was a happy toddler.
It is great for hands on learning and it often leads into a full finger painting sessions!
Ice cream Cone Counting is a fun early math activity that can be changed for toddlers and preschoolers and kindergarten aged kids.
Here’s how to set up Ice Cream Cone Counting!
Gather your supplies.
Cut out several small triangles from the brown paper these will be your ice cream cones. I did not have any more brown construction paper when I was doing this activity so I used yellow for the ice cream cone instead.
Glue the ice cream cones to a large sheet of white paper. Write numbers on the the cones that you have glue down. For toddlers stick to 1 to 5. For preschoolers you can go a bit higher. For kindergartners you can start doing skip counting by 2s and simple addition.
Set out the paints. For an finger print activity I like to use our paint palette.
It makes it super easy for my happy kindergartner to stick her fingers into the paint and it keeps everything contained and relatively easy clean up.
Have your little one dip their finger in the paint and then stamp the number of ice cream scoops on top of the cone to match the number on the cone.
Make sure they are counting as they are stamping. My happy four year old always likes to keep things uniform (she gets that from her mama!) but feel free to use different colours for each ice cream scoop! Use wipes to clean their fingers off in between colours.
Ice Cream Scoop Addition
For simple addition ask your kindergartner to use two different colours for the two numbers. This will make it a little easier for them to understand that they are adding two different items. However, if they want to use only one colour no problem, just take it slowly. After they have printed their ice cream scoops, ask them to count them and then review. For instance, you can say “You have two ice cream scoops, one ice cream scoop plus one ice scream scoop equals two ice cream scoops!”
My four year only wanted to use one colour and found this a little challenging.
So I recommend that you have them use two different colours on two different fingers.
Finger Painting Fun
Just as I predicted this activity ended with my beautiful daughter mixing all the colours with her fingers to create a beautiful mess!
Supplies
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- Black Sharpie
- Washable Kid’s finger Paint
- Brown or yellow Construction Paper
- Scissors
- Paint Palette
- White Paper Roll
- Wipes
WILL YOU TRY ICE CREAM CONE COUNTING WITH YOUR LITTLE ONE? Pin it for later!
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