In our continuation of Apple Week, Peter developed a math activity to help our Tugboats with one-to-one correspondence.  While many of our students are experts at counting, it can be difficult for a 3-year-old to make the connection that if we have 8 friends at school during rest time, we need 8 mats.  The classroom job of Snack Helper gives each child individual practice with the concept, but we wanted to extend the project as a group.

Each child was given a tree trunk (a brown rectangle), a tree top (a green cloud shape) and several apples (small red circles), as well as a glue stick.  Everyone loves glue sticks!  Upon each tree top, a number was written.  The directions were to identify the number on your tree, count that many apples from the pile, then glue them to the tree.  With 2 groups of 4 children each, Peter and I were able to assist each child individually, as well as encourage them to help each other.  Many friends were so excited to use the glue that they got a bit overzealous with their apple counting!   After a bit of practice, though, they were able to check their own trees, as well as each others’, to see if they had glued the appropriate number of apples to their trees.

Strengthening one-to-one correspondence is an important foundation for later math skills.  The journey toward number sense begins with identifying the names for each number, as well as the order in which they count.  The next step is recognizing that each number has a concrete representation, which one-to-one correspondence supports.  Once children can identify objects in quantitative terms, they can begin to perform addition and subtraction with hands-on materials and, later, theoretical numbers and written representations.  We will continue to develop these important building blocks using fun, hands-on experiences that are as much fun as they are educational!