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    Home » Learning Activities for Preschoolers

    Published: Oct 24, 2018 · Modified: Nov 4, 2018 by Fynn · All activities should be supervised by an adult. This post may contain affiliate links.

    Monster Hands Craft & Math Activity

    Monster Hands Craft Activity for kids

    It's full on Halloween fun this week at Happy Tot Shelf HQ and I just have to give everything a Halloween makeover. Like this clever idea of counting in 5s with hands from lnnally and Chalk Academy that I bookmarked few months back.

    Before we can get to the counting part, we got to first make the hands, or rather the MONSTER hands.

    I traced the hands of my children and cut them out. We made 12 green hands in all.

    Why 12 hands?

    Because 12 x 5 = 60 and knowing 5 timetable up to 12 x 5 will be useful for moving on to clock reading. That's also the bigger reason why we are doing this activity - my 5yo is taking interest in time, but has difficulty in reading the minute hand. Knowing the 5 timetable is crucial prerequisite knowledge to reading the clock successfully.

    Now the FUN part!

    Monster theme craft activity

    Monster theme craft activity

    Put out some stickers, colored paper, scissor and glue. Invite your child to make some scary looking monster hands. One mention of scariest monster hands, my children were on it right away. And they made sure to keep outdoing each other with the longest, sharpest nails.

    Monster theme craft for kids

    My 3yo figured that the nails are too long and needed to be trimmed.

    Monster craft activity for kids

    A Winning Activity for All Ages!

    Monster craft activity for kids

    This activity is clearly a winner because anything that can keep both my 3yo and 5yo engaged is a winner. I understand how parents with multiple kids are always looking for activities that will involve everyone and trust me, you have to try this one. Both my 3yo and 5yo loved it so much that we spent an hour making our monster hands and talking about how scary their hands are.

    And that's not all to this activity!

    Art AND Math 2 in 1 Activity

    Monster theme math activity for kids

    Later in the day, we used these hands to teach basic counting to my 3yo and the 5 timetable to my 5yo.

    Basic Counting for the Older Toddlers & Preschoolers

    Questions to ask:

    "Can you show me 1 with your hand?"

    "Can the monster hand show me 1 too?"

    Monster theme counting activity

    For more counting challenge, choose a number larger than 5 that require more than 1 hand.

    Monster theme counting activity

    Multiplication by 5 for the Kindergarteners

    I presented my 5yo the equation, starting from the easiest 1 x 5 and asked him how many hands do we need. We counted the fingers to get the answer. Hands on, visual learning is the essential first step for young children to make sense of abstract mathematical math equations.

    Monster theme math activity

    Monster theme math activity

    For more ideas and variations on counting with hands, check out these posts by Chalk Academy and Lnnally. Need more Halloween ideas? Check out our Halloween mini shelf and this cute monster eyes counting activity.

    More Learning Activities for Preschoolers

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      Pre-Writing Skills and Activities to Get Your Children Ready to Write
    • Everything You Need to Know Teaching Subitising
    • Fun multi-sensory activities for kids to learn letter formation
      6 Multi-Sensory Play Activities for Letter Formation

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    About Fynn

    Fynn is a Math and Science teacher from Singapore, author of The Happy Learning Book for Siblings and founder of Happy Tot Shelf. She helps parents enjoy home learning with their children through her highly popular kids' activity membership, The Happy Learners' Club. Fynn has been featured in various newspapers, websites and on radio shows as an expert in early childhood learning and creative hands-on learning ideas.

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    Hi there, I'm Fynn, an educator, author and mom of 3. I believe nurturing a love of learning begins at home. I'm here to help parents nurture a love of learning and build a strong bond with their children through fun learning together.

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