Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Counting Book for Toddlers


I don't believe I ever showed you the counting book my mother made for M a while back. Its title "How Many, Many?" is in the spirit of "The Foot Book," (How many, many feet you meet!).

As with this book that I made for M, the goal is to help her understand the concept of counting more than helping her to memorize the names and shapes of numbers. Most baby counting books go up to ten- which is fine, but in order to really understand what it means to count, it seems like a toddler needs lots of practice with counting small numbers of objects (no more than three).

Each page has a picture with one, two, or three of something. The child's responsibility is to count the objects and to lift up the correct number. If she gets it right, there is a smiley face. If she lifts up the wrong number there is nothing there.
If you're wondering where my mother got all of the cute pictures, the answer is that she always keeps her eyes open for possibilities when she browses magazines (Country and Reminiscing magazines are particularly good for this kind of thing). You can purchase blank books for making your own toddler books here).

3 comments:

Sandi said...

Wow! I never thought about teaching the concept of counting vs. memorization of the numbers. I love it!

Annette said...

Do you decoupage the books or put tape over them? I'm planning on making a book like this, but I'm afraid my toddler would rip up the pictures if I don't do something like that.

K Magill said...

Annette, we use packing tape. (glue it on with a glue stick and then use large pieces of tape over the picture)