Here’s a heart-y activity to practice counting, colors and sorting.
You’ll need…
- Different colored paper hearts. I cut mine with a paper punch but you could easily cut them freehand. (You’ll need 10 of one color, 9 of a different color, 8 of a different color…. all the way down to 1.)
- A book to stick them in. We used a Bare Book, but construction paper works fine too.
- Sharpie
- Glue
Here’s what we did:
- I gave my three year old the pile of hearts, (mixed up), and asked him if he could find all the red hearts.
- Then he sorted another color, and another, and another, until all the hearts were sorted by color.
- Then we counted each pile. Which color has only one in the pile? Which one has two?
- After we counted each pile, my son glued them down and I wrote the caption. 1 blue heart, 2 brown hearts, 3 pink hearts…
- Then he “read” it to me. (Several times.) We have a new Valentine’s Day book in our collection!
*I made the cover before my son started the project because I didn’t want those hearts to get mixed up in the sorting pile.
I love this project because it’s such an easy way to practice several skills and concepts at once, and it works for lots of age groups. My little one was focused on counting and colors. My kindergartner is able to practice reading the predictable text with picture cues. You could use different shapes for any season, or adapt this idea for older kids to practice basic math problems. (2 blue hearts + 3 blue hearts = 5 blue hearts)
Happy February! Go cut some hearts!