I was cleaning out the drawers of an old desk that used to be in my daughter’s bedroom and found a felt book I had made for her when she was attending pre-school. It was a simple book of numbers but I had personalized it with things I knew she liked and placed her picture on the front cover.
As a teacher of pre-school children for over 20 years I find that most young children are visual learners and are attracted to bright images and tactile components of books.
Although we shouldn’t stop our children from learning to count as high as they want, we need to emphasize the first ten numbers along with the concept of zero to give them a firm basis for early math.
Have fun making this number chart with your children by letting them help you collect interesting small objects. You’ll need 10 of some object, nine of another, and so on. Plan ahead so have room for everything on each line.
Here is some information on the ancient abacus and how it was used.
Supplies:
- Large sheet of cardstock
- Felts markers
- Glue
- Ruler
- Scissors
Directions:
- Draw a border along the left side of your paper. Make it wide enough to allow you to write big, bold numbers. I brought out my new packages of sparkly and metallic markers to give them some pizzazz.
- Draw eleven lines evenly spaced across the piece of cardboard so you will have 12 spaces to work in. The top or bottom space will be for a personalized title. Start with a zero written into the left margin for your first number. Then continue adding numbers and gluing on the objects.
When you are done place it somewhere so the child can reach it and touch the numbers as they are counting.
For the felt number book, I did all the sewing but my daughter told me what she wanted on each page. It was put together very economically with scraps of felt and fabric and knickknacks found around the house. I printed the numbers on the computer and cut them out.
[Photograph by Linda Dunbar. Reproduction prohibited]
