Counting Our Snack: How Much Do We Need?
Introduction
Just as Curious George counts plates, cups, straws, and blueberries for his breakfast, children can engage in a real-life counting situation if you ask them to work together in counting teams to make sure that each child has enough snack!
Materials Needed
- Disposable plates, napkins, and cups for each child
- Easily countable snack—crackers work well!
- Baskets for holding napkins and crackers
- Placemats (can simply be pieces of construction paper)
Background Knowledge
Eating a snack together will likely be a familiar activity for children in an early childhood classroom. You may even work some basic counting into each day's snack period—for example, asking each child to take six pretzel sticks from the basket. If snack is not a regular occurrence in your room, you will want to discuss some guidelines with children before this activity (staying at your seat while you are eating, cleaning up after yourself, not eating what's been dropped on the floor).
Teaching
Gather your students together in your class's meeting area. Have your supplies arranged so that children will be able to access them. Tell them that you will be working together to set up snack today and that you need to make sure each table has enough of everything you will need for snack time. Make a list with your students about what things they think they will need for snack. They will be likely to come up with many items on their own, but you may need to prompt them a bit to make sure you have all the items on the list. Now ask the children how many they think they will need of each thing. This sounds simple, but it can take some discussion for children to make the connection between needing exactly as many of each thing as there are children in the classroom. Counting the students together in the meeting area can be a big help. Have volunteers count out enough of each thing for the whole class and put it in a pile. Then discuss how many of each you will need for each table (this will vary depending on how your classroom is arranged). You should discuss the need to count out more crackers, for example, if you want each child to be able to have more than one. Assign each child at a table one thing to be responsible for bringing to his or her table.
Activity
Call each table up to count out what they will need and bring it back to their table—for example, when the blue table comes to get their supplies, the napkin person will take five napkins back to their table, the cup person will take five cups, the cracker person will take fifteen crackers, and so on. The children will work together to set their tables and pass out the snack. You or another adult will need to pour the juice. Give yourselves a round of applause before you enjoy your snack together!
Extra Challenge
Ask the tables to count up everything on their table—how many cups, napkins, placemats, crackers, and cups are there altogether? How many are there if you count the supplies at all the tables?
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