Cotton Ball Snowball Counting Activity for Preschool

Do you love snow but hate the cold? Set up this adorable snowball counting activity with your class this year and bring the winter chill indoors! Learn counting, addition, subtraction, greater than and less than, and many other math skills with a simple set of magnetic or felt numbers and cotton balls! They look just like snowballs! The snowball counting activity is a fun way to bring math to life during the long months of winter.

MATERIALS NEEDED FOR THE COTTON BALL COUNTING ACTIVITY

Cotton balls | Felt or magnetic numbers

The best thing about this activity is that you don’t need any advanced prep at all. All you need is a bag of cotton balls and a bag of magnetic or felt numbers. You can have kids work with this alone in math centers, or you can work with the whole class using the cotton ball “snowballs” as your manipulatives for the day. Turn it into a game by using a dice to roll the numbers and solve basic math problems.

Give each child a set of numbers and a bag of cotton balls. Whatever skill they are working on, use the cotton ball snowballs to help with that activity. We used our snowballs to count up to 20, as that is what my daughter is working on at this time, but there are dozens of ways to make learning fun and math more interesting with simple cotton ball snowballs. The best part about these snowballs is that they will never melt and won’t freeze your hands off. You don’t even have to wear a coat to play with them!

Try these activities with your snowballs:

• Counting
• Addition
• Subtraction
• Greater than and less than
• Which number is bigger
• Which number is smaller
• How many more
• Multiplication
• Division

Plus, pair this activity up with your favorite snow themed books for a fun math and literacy activity.

The Snowy DaySnowballs (Rise and Shine)Sunshine and SnowballsSnowball Soup (Little Critter, My First I Can Read)Small WaltThat’s Not My Snowman… (Usborne Touchy-Feely Books)

Planning for a Winter Theme? We’ve done all the work for you!

We now have interactive thematic lesson plans for toddlers (18-35 months) AND preschoolers (3-5 years)! Get ready for fun and learning with unit lesson plans for your WINTER THEME. Explore a variety of themed hands-on activities! Easy to follow lesson plans include activity modifications and adaptations to meet the needs of all learners. For more information, click on the graphics below:

Get More Activities for Your Winter Theme!