Number Correspondance via Buttons and Animals

Kev's preschool teacher suggested that we work with him on 1:1 number correspondance, which pretty much means that if there are seven elephants and we ask Kev to count out how many elephants there are, he counts seven elephants. Period. Kev, like most kids, will get to seven and then just keep going. Correspondance is about accurately counting what he is asked to count.

I visited a teacher store yesterday and saw a perfect game for this skill on sale for $35. (!!!!!!!!!!) It consisted of three drawings of jars, plus buttons to sort into the jars. For example, one jar was for circle buttons, one for square buttons and one for bear buttons. Come on? $35? I stopped at Michael's and grabbed a bag of buttons and had three jar pictures laminated at Kinko's. My total: $9. (I think I should get that $26 to spend on lattes - don't you?)

So, here is the little man, playing our jar game. We're counting and throwing attributes in for fun. This was our first sorting exercise this morning - shapes:
He did just fine with the shapes, but the 1:1 correspondance is hard for him - once he gets counting, he doesn't want to stop! But we practiced a lot and he got it.

After sorting buttons, he was over it. So I suggested we do a sort based on animals and their habitats. Ding! Ding! Ding! I found a winner - we needed seven animals that lived in the snow, six animals that lived in the water and five animals that lived on the savannah. Oooooh. This task took careful concentration and a lot of editing - "But Mommy, I want to put all da animals that wive in the water." I had to talk him out of putting his whole collection here - but now I think I have a high-interest way to get him to categorize and to practice his correspondance skills!