This toddler learning math activity combines music, play dough and math.

My toddler is trying *really* hard to keep with her pre school age sister. I mean she loves to bring me books and have me read them to her, she loves to learn and all, but..the thought stops there. It is just the idea of learning like her sister which entices her not the actual sit down and focus learning. Of course she can’t, she is 2! To feed her interests we are coming up with cool ways to ensure her need for learning is satisfied while having fun. Today’s math activity post is about learning numbers with playful little toddlers.

You will need 2 things. Play dough and magnetic numbers. Ohh and little/big fingers.

This is what we did.

First we both made play dough fingers. We took small amounts of play dough and started covering our fingers with it. This takes serious effort from a toddler, to cover each finger without causing any breaks on the play dough. Once we have all the fingers covered we “SING”

Which song? You could  sing“Where is Thumbkin?” but since I wanted to combine numbers and fingers we sang this cool song taught at kids music classes for beginning piano students. My older one attends a music class along with my younger one . So both the girls know this song very well and love it enough to keep singing.

Here are the lyrics to the song.

Thumbkin is finger number one, number one, number one
Thumbkin is finger number one, but where is finger number two?

Pointer is finger number two, number two, number two
Pointer is finger number two, but where is finger number three?

Tall man is finger number three, number three, number three
Tall man is finger number three, but where is finger number four?

Ring man is finger number four, number four, number four
Ring man is finger number four, but where is finger number five?

Pinky is finger number five, number five, number five;
Pinky is finger number five, now wiggle them all and say goodbye.

You see how the song lends itself to numbers and finger play – perfect for toddlers.
While we sang our song, each time the new finger number came on, we pick up our magnetic number and stick it on our finger. For this activity it is better to have a smaller plastic number than pictured. The ones I had were too large and kept falling off.

Here are our hands with our finger numbers. We did the song twice and took turns having the play dough fingers on. While I had the play dough fingers, she picked out the numbers and stuck them on.

This was so much fun for my toddler as we sang and  played with play dough  while learning numbers.Once we were done, we put the play dough fingers back with the plastic numbers on it for a few more minutes of number recognition.

Hope you all try this activity with the song and have fun being silly with your kids, especially toddlers. Music, play dough and math = fun!

We have shared many math activities here before. Here is our  Math Category Page.

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We have shared many math activities on the blog before.