Mudcastles

As a Special Needs Teacher this was an activity I often did in the classroom using flour. This is a less messy version.

Toddlers and children learn best with a fun, interactive and multi-sensory approach to learning and this maths activity delivers on all fronts. This maths activity is a wonderful way to teach toddlers and children number recognition, counting, addition and subtraction.

Set Up

For this activity I used the moon dough from our In the Garden activity box, a tray, some wooden numbers and an egg cup.

My son is currently learning to recognise and count up to 4. I begun by adding the moon dough to the egg cup, quickly turning it over and then carefully lifting the egg cup up to reveal a mudcastle. Together my son and I counted the mud castle and then found the wooden number 1. Then the fun started and my son counted the mudcastle independently by splatting it onto the tray.

We repeated this for each number up to 4.

If your child is older you could use this activity to teach adding one more, taking away one and building more castles.

Unlike playdough, moon dough doesn’t dry out as quickly, so this activity was left out and my son requested it again throughout the day.