Gresham was thrilled when I announced that we were going to do math with hot wheels cars! This activity was similar to our counting scavenger hunt, but covered the skill of sorting as well as counting!
I asked Gresham to choose how he wanted to sort the hot wheels cars. He chose to sort by color. After we had them in groups, I made a list of the groups on his clipboard, and he counted each group and wrote down the numbers.
Then, we made some observations. Which color has the greatest number of cars? The least? How much is the yellow group plus the purple group? How about the blue group plus the white group?
We then put all the vehicles back in the one pile and sorted them a different way – by type of vehicle. Gresham made piles for construction trucks, city workers (trash truck, police, etc.), sports cars, race cars, etc. Then he counted the new groups and wrote down those numbers.
You could also turn this into a graphing activity by making a bar graph showing how many cars are in each group. Lots of possibilities here!
Do your kids like to use objects for math? What kinds of things do you use?
5 Comments
Brittney Oct 13, 2011
Ohhh...I love this, but more importantly, my 4 year old will too!! He is always asking to "do school" but I'm trying to keep it informal right now, and this would definitely be a fun way to sneak in some math practice!
Rachel Oct 15, 2011
I love this! What a great idea. My boys like using colored noodles. A few months ago I used food coloring to dye different shapes of noodles. After the noodles dried we used them for an art mosaic. When we were finished we had lots left, so we use them for sorting and counting. It's been fun for them!
Carrie Oct 19, 2011
This is such a fantastic idea! I plan to do this with my Kdg son this week. I will have to visit often for tips for working with my little guy - my girls are so different! Thanks for your idea!
Marie Oct 23, 2011
Awesome idea. My son would love doing this with his cars..he has soo many. I have really enjoyed discovering this blog - hasn't given me so many ideas to entertain and enjoy life with my 4 year old.
Lynn Mar 2, 2013
I ran across your post on Pinterest and it brought back fond memories. My son is now 24. I taught him math with his hot wheels when he was in pre-K.
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