Winter Counting Activities
Our winter counting activities will help your preschoolers practice counting, number recognition, and writing numbers through twenty!
Add this book to your preschool winter activities.
Developing your child’s counting skills can be fun, especially when you tie counting practice to a specific theme. Winter is a great theme because kids love this cold, snowy season.
Even if you don’t have snow where you live, you can enjoy these preschool winter activities and have some winter counting fun while you play.
Winter Counting Activities
In preschool, your child will start to move beyond counting to ten and begin to associate numbers with objects up to twenty and beyond.
They will develop an understanding of one-to-one correspondence, recognize written numbers, and even start learning to write numbers and number words.
As you enjoy the following winter counting activities, reinforce these important basic skills using my brand new Winter Wishes Counting printable.
Winter Counting Activities to do in Preschool
Counting Bird’s Nests. Winter is the perfect time to count bird’s nests because you can actually find them once the leaves are gone. Take a walk with your preschool child and count the nests you find. This is a winter treasure hunt!
You can talk about the different types of nests you can see, and imagine the baby birds that lived there in Spring.
If you can, walk for several days in a row, and try to find more bird’s nests. Make it your goal to count more bird’s nests than you did the day before each time you take a walk.
Back at home, you can look at videos of birds building nests, and look up different types of nests.
Counting Mittens and Hats. One-to-one correspondence can be a tough concept to grasp. Make this more concrete for your kids by pairing up mittens and hats for the people in your home.
Find and count two mittens and one hat for each person who lives in your house! Talk about how everyone needs two mittens but only one hat.
Put together a bag of outgrown hats, gloves, and coats to donate to a local shelter, and count those too just for fun.
How many people will be able to use what you are giving away?
Count Marshmallows. Make hot chocolate together and count marshmallows as you add them to the cup. Then you count them again as you eat them one by one.
Count Vehicles. You can twist this one up in several different ways, depending on the weather in your area and how close you live to the street.
You could count snowplows that pass your street, count dirty, salty cars you see on the road, count clean cars on a warm day, or even count the cars in a coffee shop drive-thru getting warm drinks.
Count Blankets. If you are like me, the winter months are a time to pull blankets from the closet for every bedroom. Have your kids help you organize the closet and count the blankets you have available.
You can even have them match blankets to each bed and then count leftovers. If you are all really into it, you can also count sheets, pillowcases, towels, and anything else you keep stored in the linen closet.
Count Winter Words. Watch Frosty the Snowman, and count the number of times someone says “snow”, “cold” or “snowman”.
You can replicate this for any winter kids movie or snowy episodes of your child’s favorite tv show by varying the words you count.
Alternatively, you could count the winter words in some of your favorite winter time books.
Count Snowflakes. These super cute felt snowflakes will be so much fun to count! You can string them together to make a banner or just play with them at the table.
Of course, if you actually have snow, you can count snowflakes falling or icicles on the roof or snowmen on your street, but in the absence of snow felt snowflakes are the perfect solution.
Count the birds. Every February, the Great Backyard Bird Count takes place. It’s fun, easy and gets your kids interested in bird watching.
Winter is the perfect time to watch birds. Check out the official instructions and get in on the fun! Adding a bird feeder and birdbath to your backyard will help!
Count animals. What kinds of animals do you still see in winter? Watch from your window and count the animals you see, whether it’s squirrels, foxes, or deer.
If you don’t see many animals, invite them by putting out corn, seeds or making birdseed ornaments. Birds aren’t the only animals who will love them!
Our Winter Wishes Counting Printable is the perfect way to help your child learn counting to twenty, recognizing numbers and number words, and writing the numbers 1 – 10.
Here’s what’s included in our Winter Wishes Counting Printable:
- Counting Pages 1-20, with a place to practice writing the number.
- Ten-Square Pages for Numbers 1-20, asking your child to color the appropriate number of squares for each number (or use chart stickers.)
- Counting Activity for numbers 1-10, without the number provided, where your child needs to count and come up with the correct number.
- Ten Writing Practice Pages for Numbers 1-10.
Use the book for hands-on counting practice by pretending that cotton balls or marshmallows are snowballs and placing one on each item you are supposed to count on the page.
The key to build counting skills is making it as fun as possible for your little ones to practice counting. These winter counting fun ideas will engage your child and help make counting a concrete activity they can relate to.
Our Favorite Winter Learning Activities
Click the image below to read about each one.
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PRESCHOOL BOOKS WINTER FUN
Fill your book basket with a great collection of books about winter. Most of these books can be found at your local library or used bookstore.
If you have a hard time finding them, you can order them through my Amazon affiliate links by clicking the images below.
Walking in a Winter Wonderland – The classic and beloved winter holiday song “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” is brought to life with bright and colorful illustrations.
Ten on the Sled – In the land of the midnight sun, all the animals are having fun speeding down the hill on Caribou’s sled. But as they go faster and faster, Seal, Hare, Walrus, and the others all fall off . . . until just the caribou’s left, only and lonely.
The Biggest Snowman Ever – When the mayor of Mouseville announces the town snowman contest, Clayton and Desmond claim that they will each make the biggest snowman ever. But building a huge snowman alone is hard! They work and work, but their snowmen just aren’t big enough.
This “ARCTIC WILDLIFE” quiet book introduces your baby the Polar animals, helps to develop imagination and fine motor skills!
This Arctic small world sensory bin filler includes everything your child needs to engage in beneficial sensory play. Sensory play encourages children to explore their senses and enhances creativity.
Download Your Printables
Get your Counting Penguins Book in the shop here.
This activity pack includes twenty count and write pages. Kids will count winter objects, read the number word, and write the numeral.
There are also eight pages on which kids will fill in ten-frames according to the number on the sign at the beginning of the row. Kids will identify and build numbers 1-20.
You’ll find four pages encouraging children to count sets of winter items and write the number in the box in each set.
Finally, there are ten handwriting practice pages on which kids will trace numerals 1-10 and write those numerals on their own
