Pairs, Doubles, Twins...Talking About Number 2

Today we introduced Number 2 with the Number Neighborhood Flip Chart.  I began by reading Number 2's story.  Oh how she loves things that come in PAIRS!  Number 2 is a little western gal that can always be found wearing her shiny red cowboy boots. I love how she feeds her 2 horses, Salt and Pepper, and she plays with her 2 dogs, Cookies and Milk.    

When talking about Number 2 it is ideal to gather shoes and help the children to graph how many different kinds of shoes they have.  I talked about this in a prior post... {HERE}.

{image via Teach Preschool}

A variation of the Number 2 activity, found in the Number Neighborhood Activity Book, is to copy Number 2's activity page in four different colors.

Cut out each section of shoes and give the child an assortment of shoes to graph.

Have the child place the shoes on the graph.  Practice counting the different pairs of shoes.  Which kind of shoes have the MOST?  Which ones have the LEAST?  Any type of shoes EQUIL to another type?

The child can then color each pair of shoes they received.

Ta-Da!  The children are able to SORT, COUNT, and GRAPH with this fun activity!

Shoe Day

We are literally hours away from the Number Neighborhood book debut!  In my number book, number 2 wears shiny red cowgirl boots.  You are going to LOVE her!  I wanted to share with you a simple activity that we did when talking about the number 2.

Ask the children to SORT their SHOES.  We sorted in the following categories:

*running shoes
*flip flops
*dress shoes
*boots

Put the shoes in a line and see which line has the MOST?  What line has the LEAST?

Try counting by 2's and find out HOW MANY are in each category.

How about measuring your own shoes with counters?!  Great idea from the The Kinder Garden Blog.

Another fun game is called Kick Off Your Shoe.

For this game go outside and loosen one shoe.  Then kick your foot and see the shoe fly.  When you're done measure the distance your shoe flew by taking extra shoes and lining them up.

If your kids are kicking really far use another fun measuring tool like how many steps did you kick?  Such fun ways to count, measure and talk about distance.  Now I'm off to check my mail again...I am expecting that REALLY BIG package of books any minute!