Try this Thanksgiving Turkey Counting Game to help your little learners practice their counting skills. You can simply use this activity for counting, or you can even use it for comparing amounts (more and less).
There are two levels of game cards included so you can differentiate the lesson for your learners. The half sheet game cards have 15 turkeys and include counting 1-7. The full sheet game cards have 30 turkeys and include counting 2-13.
For this activity, you will need containers of red, yellow, orange, green, and brown manipulatives. You can use snap cubes, colored plastic chips or lima beans spray-painted in the colors needed.
Children will choose a mat and place one manipulative on each colored turkey (the manipulatives should be the same color as the turkey they place it on).
Children will then sort the manipulatives by color and count how many they have of each color. It’s a good idea to teach children to line up the manipulatives to make counting easier.
Optional: If you are using snap cubes, have the children hook each color of cubes together in towers and compare to see which has the most cubes.
(This post was originally published October 2008 and has been updated in 2019.)
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This is great. This year our 4-k emphasis is on math skills. We will totally use this idea. Thank you.
These are totally useful. Thanks for all you do. Your ideas are great.
Glad you like it, Jill!
I am so thankful I found his site!! I have been racking my brain looking for activities to broaden my teaching abilities. There are so many different things out there, untrustworthy and questionable teaching antics. Love your site!
Great Site. I stubbled on this accidentally and will save it to my Bookmarks. Thank you for sharing your ideas.
I just printed out the sheets and I’m going to laminate them. Can’t wait to play tomorrow with my students. Great math idea.
Thanks!!
Karen, it seems fitting in the Thanksgiving season, to tell you how grateful I am for your generosity. I have taught preschool for many years, and I share your teaching philosophy. I stumbled upon your site a few years ago, and have told so many colleagues about it since then, because your activities are so developmentally appropriate and NOT paper-pencil. I am not that tech-savy and so I really appreciate the computer generated materials that you share. God bless you!
Thank you, Jody!