Living / 8 March, 2019 / Nanny Anita

Birdie Number Match

The sun is shinning and spring is just around the corner! Hurray! In honour of the changing of the seasons I choose to do this weeks maths activity on matching the correct number of eggs to the mummy bird. I think after making it and doing it with my youngest charge that this has to be one of my favourite maths games that I have done. When I was making it I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be a one time activity, and get my little one to stick the eggs down, but I made up my mind that it would be a great one to have in our numbers and letters box that we could pull out when ever she wanted to do it. Obviously it can be done as a one time only activity as well.

To make your own birdie number match you will need:

• Paper
• Scissors
• Twine (optional)
• Pens
• Pencil
• Glue

1. Cut out a nest and stick the edges down to another piece of paper, you don’t want to stick the whole thing down as you need to be able to slot your bird and eggs inside. I decorated the out side of the nest with twine for added dimension, but it is totally optional.

2. Draw and cut out your birds. I did 5 birds and wrote on both sides of them. On each of them write a number.

3. Cut out your eggs, if you are going to reuse the activity then you will only need 10, if you are going to stick down every bird into a nest with the matching number of eggs then you will need a grand total of 55 eggs (along with 10 birds and 10 nests!).

Carefully adding the correct number of eggs

Now that you have everything it is time for the activity. I laid out all the eggs for my youngest charge and then put one of the birds into the nest. She then had to tell me what the number was and place the correct number of eggs into the nest. When she done one, we removed everything from the nest and used a new number.

Counting the number 4 on her fingers

It does take quite a while to set this activity up, but it was worth it just to see her matching the numbers correctly and then being so careful with them as if they were really birds and eggs. I only hope your little ones enjoy this number match as much as we did.

So many eggs! It’s hard to choose the right ones