Stuffed Animal Adventure Stories
Stuffed Animal Adventure Stories are incredibly easy and a little bit hilarious and they teach amazing math lessons about problem-solving, mental math, and the process of adding and subtracting.
These animals went on our adventure. Find 10 stuffed animals.
If you aren’t interested in using stuffed animals, dinosaurs, lego people, or hand-drawn cards work just fine. One day she only wanted photocopied raccoons. Fine.
Now, tell a story. See our story as a guide, but please feel all the freedom to make up your own.
“Turtle, Koala, and One Ear Bear wanted to go to the forest for an adventure. TyeDye Bunny and Octopus decided to come along. How many animals is that?”
As you are talking, pull the first three animals out of the pile toward the pretend forest. Have your little person pull the other two animals and count them to give you a total.
Math Tip #1: Teach them to count up from the three they know. In other words, put a hand over the pile of 3 animals and say, “3, then 4, 5” instead of putting them in the pile together and then counting ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5’.” Have them touch each new animal as they count it. Do it together the first few times.
Always continue the story with the new number. “Okay, so 5 animals wanted to go to the forest, but TyeDye bunny had a sore throat so she decided to take a nap.”
Have your little person pull one animal out of the pile and count down. “5, 4. Now there are 4 animals going to the forest.”
Add new layers to the game that are funny and interesting. “Sorry, the forest smelled like rotten bananas. All the animals came back. Now there are zero animals in the forest (Throw all the animals back in the pile.)
Math Tip #2: Don't assume "Zero" makes sense to your child. You may need to show that zero means none. All gone. Not any.
But that was for the best, because it was Gorilla’s birthday. (pull out Gorilla and put him on the floor in a birthday party spot) 7 animals came to help him celebrate (let your little person count out 7 animals to go to the birthday spot as well). How many animals were at the party?
Math Tip #3: Count the largest group of numbers as a whole instead of the first group of numbers introduced. For example, you would not say “1 gorilla and 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 total!” You would put your hand over the group of 7 and say, “7 plus gorilla is 8 (as you touch gorilla).”
Continue adding and taking away animals until interest wanes. Let your little person help you come up with ideas and give you adventure problems to solve too. Not only is it good for thinking mathematically, but it cracks me up every.single.time! You will probably get some, “and bunny and gorilla and octopus needed to go to the bathroom, so Big Bunny took them but octopus can only potty in the sea, and…”
Make an Adventure Book out of pictures and handwritten words or sentences that go with the actions in the pictures. More to come on this idea!
