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Counting sticks in kindergarten. ☝ games with counting sticks ☝. Exercise "Do as I do"

High-quality interesting educational toys are not cheap. And more often than not, such toys often perform some one function - they develop logical thinking or fine motor skills, creative or sensory perception. But I would like to buy an interesting, exciting and inexpensive game that could interest a child for a long time, would be multifunctional. There are games and toys whose task is exclusively to develop intellectual abilities - mathematical concepts, logical thinking, speech. It is they who are most often referred to as developing. Our universal toy should develop intellectual and creative abilities, be multifunctional, that is, such that it can be played with in different ways, used in creative pursuits, role-playing games. Because it is such a toy that develops a child for real. And there is such a toy! True, many mothers do not even think about purchasing it, since "officially" it is not intended at all for games, but for schoolwork and lies on the shelf next to stationery. These are all familiar ordinary counting sticks.


Almost every one of us remembers from childhood such an element as counting sticks. These were multi-colored plastic or wooden plates that were painted in different colors. With the help of such a simple invention, most of the children learned to count, distinguish colors, and create compositions. How, then, can such a simple and almost primitive game as counting sticks help a child develop abstract thinking, form basic preschool knowledge and become smarter and more inventive every day? In order for a modern child, who is literally immersed in a variety of different toys, to be interested in such simple objects as multi-colored thin plates, it is worth cheating a little. The first thing to do when introducing yourself to counting sticks is to say that they are "magic". And by example, they can show what to count, draw, depict various figures.





In the course of solving problems with ingenuity, puzzles, children learn to plan their actions, think them over, look for an answer, guess about the result, while showing creativity. Such work activates the child's mental activity, develops in him the qualities necessary for professional mastery, no matter in what area he then works.

Making stick shapes starts with a simple image. In the process of completing the assignment, it is necessary to explain to the child what the name of this or that figure is, how to fold the house or the sun. The display of sample images is accompanied by poems, images of real objects (for younger and middle groups), riddles, nursery rhymes. This is necessary in order for the child to develop not only a visual, but also an auditory image, as well as to maintain interest in this type of activity.


Games - puzzles with counting sticks.

Children of older preschool age are happy to guess riddles, solve various puzzles, and love games for ingenuity. One of the most accessible types of tricky tasks is games with counting sticks. They are also called tasks for ingenuity of a geometric nature, because in the course of the solution, various shapes are created and some shapes are transformed into others. In the course of such games, preschoolers willingly overcome significant difficulties, can give up momentary desires that arise in the course of completing a particular game task. In addition to pride in the consciousness of one's quick wits, confidence in one's capabilities, games - puzzles with counting sticks form such qualities as perseverance, perseverance in achieving goals, resourcefulness, develop constructive skills, mental and creative activity.

To play, you will need a set of student's counting sticks or any sticks of the same length and thickness, strips of cardboard, even matches from which the sulfur was previously cleaned off. If you are playing with children, you can give oral assignments. If the child plays alone, it is good to prepare cards on which the condition of the game problem is written (in case he can read), or it is schematically indicated how many sticks should be taken, what transformation should be done and what figure should be the result.

For example: from 7 sticks you need to make 3 triangles.

It is good if children come up with problems themselves and write down (model) them to be solved by other people (children or adults).

Tasks - counting stick puzzles can be of different difficulty levels:

To compose the given shapes from a certain number of sticks. For example, make a rhombus out of 5 sticks:

Rectangle of 8:

To transform shapes by removing a specified number of sticks.

For example, remove 4 sticks to make 3 squares:

Remove 8 sticks to make a cross:

To transform shapes by shifting sticks.

For example, Move 1 stick so that the house is facing the other way:

Move 3 sticks so that the cow flaps its tail and looks around:

When children have mastered all 3 difficulty levels of puzzle games, encourage their creativity in creating their own variants of logic problems. Come up with longer and more difficult tasks. Using successively carried out transformations, compose stories, fairy tales.

In the meantime, you are just learning, we suggest you solve the author's problem - a puzzle:

We will take 6 sticks

And let's build a new home!

If we shift 2,

They won't be able to live in that house,

He is no longer a house, but a flag.

Who can do this?

I wanted to dig

I must remove the wand

And shift another.

So I will get a spatula!

Is it ready for you?

Move the stick again

And we'll take one below

And put it in the box.

The chair came out!

Have a rest!

How many sticks? Count it.

Have you counted?

There are four of them!

Spread your legs wider,

The back must be put down -

The chair will serve as a table!

If you are not bored,

We continue our business:

Let's make a road sign

Or a triangular flag.

2 shifted again

And we got an arrow!

Only now the arrow broke

There was only one stick left.

We will put it on the table -

We can make a triangle!

Good afternoon, dear visitors of our site! Do you know why it is so useful to collect various shapes from counting sticks for preschoolers and do it regularly? This is because they develop logic, imagination, fine motor skills, the ability to concentrate, acquaint the child with the concept of "symmetry" and basic math skills.

How can counting sticks be used? With their help, you can easily:

  • think;
  • sort;
  • lay out letters and words, numbers and even examples;
  • create geometric shapes;
  • lay out the outlines of objects, creating pictures;
  • make transformations.

So let's move on to some practical exercises and activities with this simple but very visual material.

Paths for the little ones

It is already possible to explain to a two-year-old child what is “short” and “long”, “narrow” and “wide”. Put one stick and attach another to the end. Tell the little one that the path is now longer. How to make it even longer? Let the kid add one more element himself. Make 2 parallel lines in this way. Now you can ride a car along such a path.

We count details and geometric shapes

Collect from colorful sticks yourself or offer to make the child some object, for example, a square house with a triangular roof. One wall of a house can consist, for example, of 3 parts. In this case, you can make a window and a door. Now let the kid count how many red, blue or green sticks you used, how many squares and triangles were needed to create the house.

Learning letters

In the process of learning the alphabet, ask your kid to lay out the letters that you learned from the sticks. He can do it on his own or with the help of a contour. This will allow him to better remember what the letters look like, prepare his hand for writing and work with the sizes and shapes of the parts.

Find what has changed

Collect some picture from sticks, for example a Christmas tree. Ask the child to turn away, and at this time add another tier to the tree. The task of the baby is to see and voice the changes. This exercise will perfectly train his memory and attention. Swap roles for a change. Let the child also come up with figures and changes for you, and you are looking for differences.

Do as I do

You lay out any figurine from sticks. You need to start with the simplest ones, gradually complicating the task. Your baby should turn away at this time. Then you allow him to look at the picture for 5 seconds, after which you cover the figure with a piece of paper. The child's task is to lay out exactly the same figure from memory. At first, your images can be monochromatic, then 2-color, and later multi-color. Ideally, the baby should reproduce both the shape and colors of the drawing.

Getting to know the basics of geometry

Laying out simple geometric shapes, it is convenient to introduce the child to the concepts of "side", "angle", "length", "width". Show him with a visual example how a square differs from a rectangle and how to get a rhombus from two triangles. Put 2 sticks in succession and draw a circle around them. Now tell the baby that 2 sticks are the diameter of the circle, and one is its radius.

Laying out images of objects

Such activities are based on the child's ability to work with the scheme and build associations. Ready-made solutions can be downloaded from the Internet and offered to the child as a template or give free rein to his imagination. Laying out the object, the baby shows observation and attention to detail. It is also very useful to accompany the work on the image with a short rhyme describing the subject. For example:

Steamer

The big steamer is sailing
The captain is leading him.

Airplane

I saw a plane in the clear sky,
It's a pity that I have never flown in it.

A boat

The boat is standing by the river bank,
A fisherman is fishing from a boat.

Dandelion

Then he is a radiant sun,
Then he is a fluffy cloud,
I didn't want to wait for the summer,
The wind blew - flew around!

Carrot

I grow in the ground in the garden,
Red, long, sweet.

Smile

Blooms on the face
It grows with joy.

Tasks for ingenuity and logic

For children of older preschool age, the following tasks are perfect for the development of logic and ingenuity:

How to assemble 2 squares from 7 pieces? And 3 squares of 10 sticks?

How to make 2 triangles with 5 sticks? What about 3 triangles of 7 elements? Are you thinking, dear adults? The shape will look like this:
How to make 2 squares from 10 parts? Assemble a large square, the side of which consists of 2 sticks, and then build a small square inside, adding 2 more details.

How do you remove 4 sticks to leave 3 squares?

And how to shift 3 sticks so that the cow flaps its tail and looks around?

How do you like such a task in poetic form?

We will take 6 sticks
And let's build a new home!
If we shift 2,
They won't be able to live in that house.
He is no longer a house, but a flag.
Who can do this?
I wanted to dig -
I must remove the wand
And shift another.
So I will get a spatula!
Is it ready for you?
Move the stick again
And we'll take one below
And put it in the box.
The chair came out!
Have a rest!
How many sticks? Count it.
Have you counted?
There are four of them!
Spread your legs wider,
The back must be put down -
The chair will serve as a table!
If you are not bored,
We continue our business:
Let's make a road sign
Or a triangular flag.
2 shifted again
And we got an arrow!

Counting sticks for all-round development and interesting leisure time

Have we convinced you that the function of colored counting sticks is more than just learning how to count before first grade? You can have a great time with them, and you can start classes almost from the age of two. By practicing regularly with this material, your little one will be able to:

  • show imagination;
  • operate with the concepts of “big”, “small”, “long”, “short”, “wide”, “narrow”;
  • learn to work with diagrams;
  • learn colors;
  • study letters;
  • get acquainted with geometric shapes and their features;
  • develop logic and ingenuity;
  • show your creativity;
  • learn to describe your image, that is, develop vocabulary.

We wish you fun activities and interesting ideas! See you soon!

Each of us, from the time of school, has known such an elementary manual as counting sticks... I remember when I went to the 1st grade, for some reason my parents could not find factory sticks in stores, and for some time I and several other classmates had to wear matches with cleaned sulfur heads to mathematics lessons)))

Of course, there is no such problem these days, although colored ice cream sticks, matches, and even pencils are fine for the games I want to offer today. We bought 2 identical sets of counting sticks for games and practice. In addition, we also have beautiful painted ice cream sticks, I will tell you about them next time.

Did you know that with counting sticks you can do more than just math and counting? Even the smallest kids can play with them and develop in different directions at the same time!

For example, load the sticks one by one into the machine - a good activity for the development of fine motor skills. You can also name the colors of the sticks.

For older children, you can give a complicated building: load 10 sticks into the machine (or 5 yellow, three pink, four orange and one green).

Sort the sticks by color.

Offer your baby doll plates that match the color of the sticks (you can take ordinary sheets of colored paper or cardboard for the plates).

Ask them to arrange the chopsticks by color into matching plates.

"Draw" with counting sticks

Why not draw using various pictures from counting sticks? Depending on the age of the child, choose different methods and difficulty levels:

  • Laying out geometric shapes (left) and simple objects from them: triangle + square = house (right).

You can lay out figures of different colors on assignment, ask to repeat it in the same way as with mom, or make a figure the same, but in a different color.

And, of course, you can do calculations: how many sticks do you need to fold such a triangle, square, trapezoid? Which shape can be folded using only 3 sticks? And 4?

  • Laying out silhouettes along the template contour.

Make several template schemes in advance: lay out various compositions from sticks on a sheet of paper and circle them with felt-tip pens of the desired color. The kid will need to lay out the sticks directly on the picture, picking them up according to the given color.

You can complicate the task by offering to lay out the drawing not on a sheet of paper, but next to it, using the diagram as a sample.

  • Another option for "drawing": depict on sheets of paper elements of some objects, creatures, etc.: a face that can become the sun with the help of ray sticks, a silhouette of a hedgehog that needs to be added needle sticks, crossbars that can become a fence ...

The game "Do as I do"

An adult lays out the sticks in any color sequence (horizontally or vertically), the child's task is to repeat it.

Rug

Give the child a piece of mesh and show how you can thread the stick through the holes. You can set a certain color sequence and ask to continue it. This kind of play miraculously promotes the development of motor skills and mindfulness.

Collecting flowers

Give your baby artificial flowers with holes in the middle and show how you can insert sticks into them as stems and collect flowers in a bouquet.

Sorter game with chopsticks

In addition, using the counting sticks, you can make a sorter and exercise machine for fine motor skills of your fingers!

For the base, use a bucket of ice cream / mayonnaise or a tin can with not sharp edges (for example, from a mixture).

Glue a sector of colored paper on the cover (we used self-adhesive), make holes with nail scissors - and a wonderful educational toy is ready! With its help, your baby will not only train his fingers by inserting sticks into the holes, but will also develop color perception, and with your help, he will learn colors.

Did you like the games I suggested? Which one seemed the most interesting? Please write about it in the comments!

Share your ideas and suggestions on the topic of homemade educational games.

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2017 © Olesya Shirokova's project "Grow and Grow"

Learning task: to consolidate counting skills in preschool children, to enrich vocabulary.

Developing task: to develop attention, memory, speech, presentation and perception, logical thinking, imagination, will, skills of action in a group.

Educational task: cultivate perseverance, politeness.

Material: counting sticks (1 box for each child), samples of pictograms.

1. "We are counting sticks"

The teacher gathers the children near him and shows a box of counting sticks. He offers to play with them, but start the game with the transformation: “You and I are counting sticks. We will stand evenly, holding our hands, like sticks in a box. When I scatter you, you need to scatter (but keep your hands pinned). Then I will give the command for how many sticks to put together. "

The game begins, the teacher "collects" sticks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

2. "Lay out the pictogram"

Target: develop logical thinking, presentation and perception, logical memory, attention.

Material: counting sticks (1 box for each child).

The teacher offers to see what a pictogram is and what they are, drawing the attention of children to the samples of pictograms.

The teacher explains that a pictogram can be laid out from counting sticks, shows samples of pictograms and suggests folding the same ones. After that, you can give other tasks: lay out a car, a flag, a suitcase, etc. without a sample.

You can invite the children to think and lay out their pictogram, explaining what kind of figure they made.

3. "Description"

Target: enrich vocabulary; develop will, attention; cultivate perseverance.

The teacher invites everyone to sit in a circle and, passing a stick to each other, say a word about it.

Option I - what is it (adjectives): white, plastic, smooth, ribbed, etc.

Option II - what can you do with it (verbs): fold patterns, knock, pick, etc.

4. "Wipers"

Target: to develop movements, to cultivate politeness, to develop skills of action in a group, attention.

Material: counting sticks (preferably in different colors) one set for all children.

The teacher scatters all the counting sticks in the group. Children stand around and, at the signal of an adult, begin to collect counting sticks in a box. If they are all different colors, then the task is given to fill the box as quickly as possible. If the sticks are the same, then first it is proposed to collect 5 sticks, then 10 sticks each. In this case, the main thing is not to push and not offend each other.

The game can be repeated several times.

5. "Let's make a story"

Target: develop speech, attention, memory, thinking, imagination.

Children sit in a circle and, passing each other a stick, make up a story about it, each saying one sentence. The teacher begins the story: "Once upon a time there was one counting stick, and it lay in a box with the rest ...".

The teacher can write down the story and then read it to the children.

6. "Relaxation"

Target: teach children to relax, relieve unnecessary stress.

The teacher says: "Today you played with counting sticks and you yourself were, let's turn into them again." Then the teacher takes each "stick" - the child - and puts it exactly one after the other on the floor. After that, the teacher says: “I've played enough counting sticks, I put them in a box. Now all the sticks lie calmly, they are warm and comfortable. Sing them a lullaby.

The teacher can sing himself or turn on some quiet music.

Lessons with counting sticks were prepared by O. Ksianda