Math & 123s
Move & LearnPreschoolersGrade SchoolKindergartners17 Comments
Dandelion season has begun! Our yard is filling up fast with those yellow spots.
My kids absolutely love them. They think they’re special.
Me… well, I’d rather they weren’t spotting my front yard… but hey, I don’t have a green thumb to make them all go away. So instead, we found a fun race to get the kids to pick them all.
And when I say we, I mean my husband. He gets credit for coming up with this dandelion counting race.
The boys were playing with sidewalk chalk earlier and drew some lines all the way down the sidewalk. I went back and made it a grid, a column for each of the boys.
There were a couple rules to the race:
- Race to fill up your column with dandelions
- Each grid spot in your column had to be filled with X number of dandelions.
- X was determined by each child’s age. George had to fill each of his with 4, Henry 7, Louis 2.
Instead of using your child’s age, you could pick a number that your child is working up to counting to (i.e. if they count to 10 easily, try pushing it to 12 dandelions for each grid space).
Or, you could put 1 dandelion in the first grid space, 2 in the second, 3… and so on.
The boys raced around the yard to pick as many dandelions as their hands could carry and rushed back to the sidewalk to fill their column.
Carefully counting each dandelion for each grid space each and every time.
George lost interest after a little bit.
I was kind of surprised, because he’s the one that really loves dandelions.
My husband got him back into it though by picking the dandelions with him.
He was on a mission then and ended up beating Henry in the race! But shhh… I’m not that one confirming that.
Henry wasn’t too happy about that… so he added more spaces to only George’s column…. he thought he was being smart.
George wasn’t too happy about that!
Louis was going to join us in the race at the beginning, but he got sidetracked with the sidewalk chalk. I think he was excited to have it to himself. He happily played while the other two ran around crazy!
Why this race is awesome:
- The boys are running around outside
- They’re counting, over and over again
- The dandelions get picked.
If you do have a green thumb and don’t have dandelions in your lawn, you could also do this with rocks, leaves, or any little items that you have a lot of in the house (buttons, beads, etc).
Have you seen the fine motor activity we’ve done with dandelions?
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Jennifer Pinkham says
Do you have a pdf version of the directions? I would love to see it all in one place instead of over several pages of scrolling and ads on your site. Thanks.
Tabitha Lightfoot says
Hi Jennifer! Sorry, we don’t have a PDF of the directions! But here are the steps. Make a grid out of chalk. Race to fill up your column with dandelions. Each grid spot in your column had to be filled with X number of dandelions. X was determined by each child’s age.
Ashy says
Once cool, use a pencil to draw large hearts on the wax paper envelopes, and then cut out hearts. (I was surprised how easy it is to cut the wax paper with melted crayon inside.) Initially, I was going to trace prefect’s hearts, but I decided to freehand them and let my daughter cut them out.
Allen says
Nice game
Jolanthe says
What a fantastic idea! Great way to get some exercise, pick all those lovely dandelions, and practice counting!
Laura at Mommy Maleta says
What a great idea full of spring fun! Thanks for linking up your creativity at the Thoughtful Spot!
susen @Dabbling Momma says
My daughter is crazy dandelions, what a great way to put them to use!
Cass@frugalfamily says
GREAT idea! Thanks for linking up with this week’s #FabulouslyFrugal x x
Meghan @ PlaygroundParkbench says
This is awesome! Love your simple, but unique and creative ideas. Thanks for sharing at #WeLoveWeekends
Nicola - Multicraftingmummy says
We certainly have enough dandelions of our own to do this game right now! Thanks for the inspiration and for linking upto the #familyfrugallinky
lana says
very sweet! my boys wouldn’t like it so much but I can see a lot of kids getting into it.
Kristianne says
I love this idea! We do all kinds of things with dandelions! I have tons of them too!
Noreen from Entangled Harmony says
Let them grow. The bees love them. And clearly so do your boys. :)
Another idea I used with the kids in my classes today is to fill a container with some water and add dandelions. They started out as ducks and boats and eventually the kids turned it into spring soup by adding whatever they could find.