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.
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.
Download the Five Little Leaves 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
by Karen Cox5 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.”
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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!
Thanks, Jan!!
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.
Great idea, Eileen!
You are amazing, Karen! Thank you for all these fun activities 🙂
So glad you like them, thanks!
I love this. Thank you for your generosity.
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 🙂
Thanks so much! The shop helps keep this site online, so I truly appreciate it! Good luck on your evaluation!
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 .
Thanks for sharing
Looks so fun! Where did you order the leaves?
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.