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Five Little Leaves Math: Simple Preschool Subtraction Game

By Karen Cox | Affiliate Disclosure | Filed Under: Forest Theme

This Five Little Leaves Math Game is an interactive rhyme activity to help kids practice simple subtraction in Pre-K. Subtraction is a big concept, but with rhymes like this one (much like Five Little Monkeys and similar rhymes), preschool kids are practicing “taking away” in a playful, developmentally appropriate way.

Five Little Leaves: Pre-K Math Activity

For this activity, just print the mats and rhyme, find some manipulatives, and have fun!

I wrote this rhyme myself, but there are many variations of Five Little Leaves, and you can use any one of them with this mat. There’s a printable sheet of the rhyme included in the printable below.

How to Play the Five Little Leaves Game:

Print the rhyme, and print a mat for each child in your group. These come in color and blackline.

Use some leaf manipulatives. I have this leaf table scatter that works great. You can also use foamie leaf shapes or have kids make leaves with play dough. You can pretend that colored flat floral marbles are leaves.

Have children count and place 5 leaves on the tree. Recite the rhyme to the children with the number five. When the leaf falls in the rhyme, have children move one of their leaves either off the mat or down beside the trunk of the tree. Repeat with each number until there are no leaves.

Five Little Leaves Printables

Download the Five Little Leaves Game:

Download the Game

Note: This is a free printable, just click to download.

If you need printable pocket charts and books of this rhyme (and a position words rhyme), check out my Five Little Leaves Book & Pocket Chart set in my shop.

From My Shop:

Five Little Leaves Rhyme: Pocket Chart, Books
Fall Slide & Count Game

Five Little Leaves
by Karen Cox

5 little leaves,
High up in the tree.
Along comes a fall breeze,
Windy as can be
Down one leaf falls,
Down, down, down
Falls until it hits the ground.

Repeat the rhyme, replacing the number each time. At zero, change the last two lines to:
“No more little leaves,
High up in the tree.”


Five Little Leaves: Easy Subtraction Activity

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14 Comments Tagged With: Fall Activities for Pre-K

About Karen Cox

Karen is the founder of PreKinders.com. She also works as a full-time Pre-K teacher in Georgia. Read more...

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jan Quisenberry says

    November 1, 2016 at 12:33 pm

    I really love your newsletter and activities. I purchased several story problem sets and they are on target for our TK class. Thanks so much for all your hard work!

    Reply
    • Karen Cox says

      November 1, 2016 at 10:22 pm

      Thanks, Jan!!

      Reply
      • Eileen Butz says

        November 2, 2016 at 12:43 pm

        I really enjoy your wonderful ideas. I am using an idea from the graphic for trees with the falling leaves but instead I’m using black paper with stars falling out of the sky. A wonderful way to adapt it to our space theme. Hello from Napa, Ca.

        Reply
        • Karen Cox says

          November 3, 2016 at 9:31 pm

          Great idea, Eileen!

          Reply
  2. Tzrd says

    November 1, 2016 at 2:52 pm

    You are amazing, Karen! Thank you for all these fun activities 🙂

    Reply
    • Karen Cox says

      November 1, 2016 at 10:23 pm

      So glad you like them, thanks!

      Reply
  3. Kimtine says

    November 1, 2016 at 8:52 pm

    I love this. Thank you for your generosity.

    Reply
  4. Sharon McDonald says

    November 1, 2016 at 9:50 pm

    I purchased your “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie” unit. I’ll be doing several pieces of it tomorrow for my formal evaluation! Thank you for the great ideas. I appreciate all that you do to share your wonderful lessons with us! Now if I can just nail this evaluation tomorrow 🙂

    Reply
    • Karen Cox says

      November 1, 2016 at 10:24 pm

      Thanks so much! The shop helps keep this site online, so I truly appreciate it! Good luck on your evaluation!

      Reply
  5. DONNA says

    November 4, 2016 at 3:28 pm

    thank you lots of fun , i really like teaching 3-4 year old’s they like all these learning activity’s , when they remember and tell there parent’s with great excitement what we did today , it make’s my day , thank you for all the great ideas .

    Reply
  6. Susan says

    November 9, 2016 at 11:16 am

    Thanks for sharing

    Reply
  7. Marci Knight says

    October 18, 2017 at 6:36 pm

    Looks so fun! Where did you order the leaves?

    Reply
    • Karen Cox says

      October 18, 2017 at 8:51 pm

      Hi Marci, They are table scatter that I picked up in Target Dollar Spot last year. You can sometimes find table scatter at the Dollar Tree or craft stores. You could also use leaf erasers or foamie leaf shapes.

      Reply
      • Dianne Carman says

        November 4, 2018 at 2:27 pm

        You can order the acrylic leaves from Amazon.

        Reply

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Visit My Shop! 

Welcome!

Glad you're here! You'll find hands-on learning activities, themes, and printables for Pre-K, Preschool, and Kindergarten kids. I'm Karen Cox, a Pre-K teacher in Georgia. I have taught 4-5 year olds for 20+ years! Read More…

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Get FREE weekly updates!
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We collect, use, and process your data according to our Privacy Policy.
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Get FREE updates!
Join here to get weekly emails with free printables and activities for Pre-K!
We collect, use, and process your data according to our Privacy Policy.
Don't worry - we never sell or share email addresses!