Combine fine motor skills, math, and play with these Giraffe Play Dough Mats!
Find all play dough mats here!

These Giraffe Play Dough Math Mats will help children practice counting and numeral recognition while they exercise their fine motor muscles.
These mats are perfect with a Wild Animals unit.
Giraffe Play Dough Mats
These mats are easy prep — they can be slipped into clear page protectors and hooked together with metal binder rings. Then just add them to your play dough area. You can laminate them if you prefer.
The top of each mat says “Give the giraffe [#] leaves to eat.” Children will identify the numeral, and count out that amount of leaves to place on the tree for the giraffe.
To use these as play dough math mats have children create the leaves with bits of green play dough to place on the mat.

As an alternative to play dough, you can also use green flat floral marbles for leaves or cut out simple leaf shapes from green craft foam. Or, you could spray paint lima beans green. I also have in my collection of manipulatives, a set of green plastic leaves that came with a bag of colored Fall leaves. I bought those at a craft store during the Fall.
Use what you prefer, but I chose play dough as a manipulative because this way, we also practice important fine motor skills at the same time we are doing math.
I also made a mat that does not have a number, but simply says “Feed the giraffe some leaves.” This mat is for toddlers who are not ready for counting yet, but need to practice fine motor skills with play dough.
You can also use this mat for higher numbers, such as 11-20.

Click to Download the Giraffe Play Dough Mats:
Note: These mats are free printables. Just click to download!
Download: Giraffe Play Dough Mats
More Wild Animals Resources You’ll Love:

Wild Animals Math & Literacy Printables
Get the Wild Animal Printables here!
This set includes 17 Wild Animal Theme math and literacy activities for small group or center time.
All activities are hands-on learning and designed especially for Pre-K and Preschool.
Book Connection
A good book to read with this activity is called “Feeding Time” by Lee Davis. The book explores the different types of foods that animals living on the African Savannah like to eat.

Originally published March 2011. Updated February 2022.
Great ideas, as always! Keep up the good work!
Love it! Thanks so much for sharing!
Thanks! Glad you like them!
Genius!!!!! Love these!!
thanks so much for these. I love them. We’ll def. be doing this activity!
Thank you for the great activities and printables on your website!! They are fantastic.
I LOVE how easy this will be to incorporate into the classroom! Thank you for letting us borrow your brilliant ideas! Amy
Thanks!
I love this! I especially appreciate the “blank” one because I can use it so many different ways: with numbers 1-10 for the little ones; numbers 11-20 for the little bit bigger ones; addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with the bigger ones; and even with letter cards and green letters for alphabet work!
Thank you so much for sharing!
Thanks for your very wonderful ideas! Could you make the giraffe toddler mat in black and white so I could save ink?
Thanks,
Betty
Hi, Betty! Thanks for visiting. When you print, check your options — there is one to print in black and white (it might say monotone). I can’t change it to black and white, because it would be very time consuming and tedious work to do, plus I think the majority of people are more interested in color mats. Sorry about that.
I love your website! This is my first year teaching preschool and you have such wonderful ideas! Thank you soooo much!
I love this! Thank you so much for sharing it. I can’t wait to use it.
Marla
Love the ideas! I always come to PreKinders first when planning for my preschool class. Thank you and keep it up!!!!
Hi Karen, I love your ideas and use them with my preschool speech therapy students. I noticed that you use the metal binder rings for your page protected books. I wanted to pass along my original (I think) idea that’s too good to be true. I discovered that zip ties are a great alternative. Just snip off the tail after adjusting them to where you need them. So much quieter, less bulky, and less expensive (and who can beat that combination!) They also come in different colors!
Thanks for sharing that idea, Rosemary! That’s perfect! Now why didn’t I think of that? š