How to Teach Your Preschooler to Count with Pompoms

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More ideas on counting games for preschool kids! Today we’re using colorful pompoms, number cards, color cards, clothespin, and a paper plate, to learn counting and grouping by colors.

If you haven’t read my previous counting activities, you might want to go take a look at this post when we used popsicle sticks, or this one with wooden dominos, or this one with counting chips. All with rainbow color materials, perfect for young eager learners! 😉

I’ve come to a realization about what would be the basic types of learning activity for your preschoolers, at age range of 3-6 years old.

I do think some similar repetitive activities can still be enjoyable for them. It does not have to be a totally new activity every time, as long as we keep it:

simple – less instructions, more flexibility

in short duration – too long and they might get bored easily, or refused to play anymore

with variety of materials – think about bright colors, different shapes, or textures

Ok now, on to THE FUN!

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Activity: Counting Games for Preschool with Pompoms

Recommended age group: 3-6 years old

Materials needed:

Pompoms, the more colors the merrier! I personally love the bigger bigger pompoms like this, since they’re easier to handle by small hand.
Number cards and color cards. I make my own, using A4 print paper, scissors, color pencils and marker.
Wooden clothespin/colorful clothes clips. Any type will do, just make sure your child can easily pinch it to move the pompoms. In fact, this jumbo tweezer for kids would work perfectly, for their fine motor skill.
Paper plate, or any container to place the selected pompoms

Preparation time required: 5-10 minutes

Learning objectives: Counting objects, color recognition, grouping by colors, and working on pinching grasp.

How to play

First, prepare your number cards and color cards. I only used the number 1 to 5 to make the activity easier, because pinching the pompoms is not a small job for my 3.5yo hahaha!

And, I also made the color cards.

This is just a different set of card-size papers. I would draw a big circle on it, color it, and wrote the name of the color on top. You can see in the image above, my daughter was happily volunteering herself to help me coloring the circle.

Next, prepare your piles of pompoms and the paper plate.

I asked my eldest daughter to pick the cards and asked her little sister for the correct pompoms.

Basically big sis needed to pick one number and one color. Then ask, “May I have [one] [blue] pompom please?”

Then little sis would try to find the pompom having the correct color, and put it on the plate. While I asked her to count loudly with me. Repeat until she has the correct number of pompoms.

If we got the correct number and color of pompoms, everyone would clap hands together, hurraaaaay!

Then repeat again, big sis could choose the next number and color for the game.

Adding further learning option

Here are some you could try too;

Let’s pick some pompoms (with same colors). Ask the kids to count together, and say what color they’re, and pick the correct cards.
Play “How many more?” Pick a number & color. Then pick some pompoms deliberately one less than the expected number. Ask the kids to count, and guess how many more they should add to continue counting.
Forget the number cards. Just play with the color grouping. Make different shapes!

When you have more than one kids to play

Oh, I’ve done that as above! You can turn the different activities into role play. Here I deliberately made the number with numerals, and the colors, so your preschooler is not necessarily able to read the words.

That’s one simple idea to play numbers and colors with pompoms. For such counting activities, of course you can replace the pompoms with other objects, like lego, building blocks, and so on.

Oh, and if you’re interested to find more activity ideas at home to keep the children busy without TV and gadgets, I cannot recommend enough Jamie’s blog on Hands On As We Grow. You should check her free 7-day activity plan for simple go-to ideas to do with your kids anytime anywhere that parents love because they’re so practical, easy, and kids love the time spent together!