Farmyard
The more hands-on practice young children have with
counting, the easier it becomes to visualize numbers and give meaning to
them. This farmyard game makes early learning fun! If you don’t have
farm animals, use dinosaurs, cars, or anything else you have to hand, or
print out our animal counters.
Age:
3-5
Skills:
Counting
Counting on
Visualizing numbers
Equipment:
One die (1-3 twice; see instructions below)
Printable game board or file folder
Plastic farm animals, or use our animal counters.
The die:
You will need to “doctor” a die so that it has 2 each of the numbers 1
to 3. You can do this easily by covering over the faces of an ordinary
die with small plain stickers. You may want to write the number 1s in
one colour, 2s in another colour and so on.
Instructions
You will need one “game board” for each player, and lots of farm
animals. Choose the game board which you feel is most appropriate for
your child: younger children may benefit from having the numbers written
onto their “field”. If you are making a file folder game, print out two
copies of the same board and stick one on each side of the file folder;
two children can then play together. Put the animals in the center of
the table where everyone can reach them.
Farmyard Printable
The youngest child starts by rolling the die and selecting the
appropriate number of animals to go into his field. If you are using the
numbered game board, he should place them in the correct order.
The first child to 10 wins. Encourage lots of counting along the way and
ask plenty of questions (“How many more animals will Mary need to get to
10?”).
Variations:
Older children can be encouraged to roll the correct number to reach 10
exactly.
Turn the game round and start with 10 animals in the
field. The first to take all the animals away is the winner.
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