Autumn is a great time to enjoy themed learning activities. In this guest post, Shelly and her kids enjoy some Autumn Tree Maths using printables from Activity Village.
Autumn Tree Maths Activities
By Shelly
I love autumn and there is just something about the change in colour that always makes me think of themed learning activities. I knew there was a page at Activity Village with an empty autumn tree waiting for kids to decorate with leaves so I downloaded that and started looking for leaf templates, thinking I would make my own leaves. But while I was searching for the leaf templates I spotted the autumn leaf domino set which looked perfect so I printed out a set and started cutting out the leaves.
Cutting out the leaves from the autumn leaf dominoes set
Decorate the tree for autumn page with leaf cut-outs
My idea was straightforward: the kids would need to stick the leaves onto the correct tree. Really straightforward! But the twist comes in with how you label the trees and what you write on the leaves. (Of course you could always give the kids blank leaves and then ask them to write the correct numbers or sums on the leaves themselves before they attach the leaves to the tree).
My first thought was odd and even Numbers. I chose not to write on the trees but rather to create labels saying odd and even so I could reuse the same tree pages multiple times.
Putting the leaves on the correct tree
Here's the finished even number tree
You could extend this and write more complex odd and even numbers on the leaves – 237, 498 etc.
We are in a bit of a times table phase with my youngest and are often talking about multiples and doing lots of skip counting - so my second thought was multiples. I went with the multiples of 2 and 3 but really any would work. With multiples you will get numbers that apply to both trees, but don’t worry about this: it is a good thinking point for the kids and once they realise a number could apply to both trees you can always ask if they can think of any other examples.
Decorating trees with multiples of 2 and 3
Finished multiples of 3 tree
And then we did number bonds. Again any number bonds would work. I went with number bonds for 10 and 12 as my example.
Decorating the trees with number bonds of 10 and 12
You could also include some subtraction sums as well.
My son saw me creating the leaves and he suggested that I made leaves where you matched the number to its word. So on one leaf I would write the number 7 and on another leaf I would write the number word "seven". I like his idea so I made a few up.
Matching the number to its number word
I think they work quite nicely.
This sent me off on a completely different tangent. If you created slightly larger autumn leaves you could also make contraction leaves. So on one leaf you write “do not” and then on another you write the contraction “don’t” and the kids need to combine the matching leaves on their autumn tree. I actually really like that idea and think an autumn contraction leaf tree would be quite cool – something you could stick up on a notice board in the house.
This is a guest post from Shelly. Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 8 and 10. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on the different learning activities that they do including lots of hand-on maths, arts and crafts and anything else that is part of their home educating lifestyle.
You can find more guest posts by Shelly, and a list of all our guest posts, here.
