Double the Ducks - Early Math Activities

My 3-year-olds adore the book Double the Ducks in the MathStart series by Stuart Murphy.  It inspired me to create an entire morning of activities for the kids around the concept of doubling numbers.  I included stickers, snacks, cooking, and painting activities and my children quickly caught on to this Math concept (so when we get around to teaching the multiplication table, x2 will be a piece of cake!)  Here's what we did...



Double the Ducks

I love adding props to picture books, so I threw together these little drawings to go along with Double the Ducks so the girls could count along as each group of objects is doubled.


Double the Snacks

Who wants 4 goldfish crackers when you can have 8?  Throughout the day, I would give the kids small numbers of countable snacks and then they would yell "Let's Double It!" to double the amount.  My girls are very sensitive to interpersonal relationships, so they really enjoyed "finding a friend" for each goldfish and placing them in pairs that were "kissing each other".  My guess is that this approach would not work as well for boys (I guess I'll find out when Baby H gets older).


Double the Stickers (with a mirror)

One of the kids' favorite activities involved placing stickers on strips of paper and then magically doubling them using a small hand mirror.



Double the Recipe

 

We doubled a recipe (pancakes with chocolate and peanut butter chips).  I got out measuring cups in different sizes to avoid working with fractions (for example, the recipe calls for 3/4 cup of water, so we used the 1/4 measuring cup and I asked them to double 3).  The girls always love cooking with Mom.


Double the Dots

 

By far the top activity of the day was painting dots on one side of a strip of paper and then folding them over so each dot has a "friend".  This was the first time we had done this, and now every time we do any painting, someone is always folding her paper in half to see what happens.

These activities were great to introduce the word "double" into our vocabulary and see this math concept in action using a variety of hands-on mediums.  Lots of fun..