Math is an important part of the early childhood curriculum that helps children get prepared for kindergarten. Foundational numeracy skills like sorting, counting, and recognizing shapes equip children to do well when they transition to elementary school math.
As early childhood care & learning providers know, young children learn best through play. In this article, we share some ideas for incorporating math into outdoor play activities and nature exploration.
Image and activity idea from Nurture Store
This simple math activity requires no set-up and is a great way for young children to get comfortable with comparison, counting, and measuring. Gather leaves, or any other natural materials such as rocks and twigs, and then ask the children questions about the relative size of each of the materials, such as…Is this leaf bigger or smaller than this one? Which of these three leaves is the largest? You can then ask the children to help you lay out the items in increasing and decreasing size order. To incorporate counting skills, you might invite the children to join you in counting all the leaves, rocks, or twigs. This activity is one of many nature-based early math activities that can be found in this Forest School guide.
Image and activity from Nature with Kids
This activity requires only chalk, an area of sidewalk, and a variety of natural materials, such as leaves, rocks, twigs, acorns, pinecones, etc. Start by drawing circles on the concrete and writing a number inside each circle. If you work with older children, you might encourage them to draw the shapes and practice writing their numbers.
Next, ask the children to place items within each circle in the quantity that corresponds to the number written inside that circle. This activity helps children to practice one-to-one correspondence and counting. To make this a sorting activity, you can draw circles (or other shapes) without numbers, and then help children sort the items, putting leaves in one circle, or rocks in another circle. Sorting helps children practice classification and categorization.
This simple activity engages children in foundational geometry concepts such as shape, size, and space.
You’ll want to prepare by gathering a variety of natural materials for the children to use. Draw a few shapes on the sidewalk with chalk for children to follow, and invite them to place the materials on the drawings to create something new, such as a circle of rocks, a triangle from twigs, or a square with leaves. You might introduce pattern recognition by inviting little ones to alternate the materials they use on the shape.
Draw new shapes, such as a larger triangle or a smaller square, next to the first set of shapes, and ask the children to compare the sizes of the two triangles, circles, or squares. If your group includes older children, you might invite them to draw some shapes and encourage them to see how many different shapes they can create!
Images and activity idea
from Mother Natured
The only materials you’ll need to have on hand for this activity are rulers, measuring tape, and a scale. You’ll start by helping children collect a variety of natural materials that they will then measure and compare. If measuring is a skill that is new to the children, you can work with them as a group as you demonstrate how to measure size with rulers and measuring tapes, and weight with scales. Children can also work individually by working with a tool that interests them and walking around to collect measurements.
If you have a bucket scale, you and the children can compare the weights of materials. Or, you can create a graph to track the children’s measurements and compare sizes.
Measuring helps children to become comfortable with counting, number recognition, categorization, and comparison.
Click here to find more information about setting up this activity.
Take a measurement walk in your outdoor space to measure how far it is between two objects. You’ll choose two objects, such as two trees or a set of doorsteps and a bush, and invite the children to use their legs and feet to measure the distance between them.
For example, you might invite each child to count the number of steps it takes them to get from one object to another. Record the number of steps and then ask them to count again, this time as they travel using giant steps. Did they take more or fewer steps? Hopping and jumping are also great ways to measure!
For more play-based math activities, visit this article, which features math with animals, another favorite of young children!
Animal-themed Activities & Books for Building Foundational Math Skills
“Let’s Talk About Math” Videos from Zero to Three 
Math Resources from DREME
