Learn how to make a fun math craft from paper plates for farm animals! In this hands-on activity, your child will create animals with different numbers of legs to practice comparing quantities.
Learning goals
This activity will help your child:
- Count to see how many are in a group
- Compare groups of objects to determine which has more
- Count, compare and talk about quantity
materials
- Paper plates (or other round objects such as lids, paper cups, or pompoms)
- Construction paper and/or pipe cleaners
- Markers or colored pencils
- Glue
- Index Cards
- Google eyes (optional)
Step-by-step instructions
1. Make a spider!
- Did you know that spiders have eight legs and eight eyes? Use a paper plate for the spider’s body. Color it purple with colored pencils or markers.
- Cut out eight strips of construction paper for the legs or use eight pipe cleaners. Glue the legs to the sides of the paper plate.
- Cut out a small circle for the head and draw eight eyes on it (or you can use googly eyes). Attach the spider’s head to the body of the paper plate with glue.
- Bonus! Punch a hole in the paper plate and tie a string to it to hang your spider from its web!
2. Make a pig!
- Use a pink colored paper plate for the pig’s body.
- For the legs, cut four hearts out of construction paper. Glue two legs to the bottom of the paper plate and two legs to the bottom of the paper plate.
- Cut two triangles out of construction paper for the ears and glue them to the top of the paper plate.
- Cut a round pig snout out of construction paper and draw on two ovals for the nostrils. Glue it to the paper plate.
- Draw two eyes or add googly eyes.
- Bonus! Twist a pipe cleaner, punch a hole in the side of the plate and insert the pipe cleaner to make a tail!
3. Make a chick!
- Use a yellow colored paper plate for the body of the chick.
- For the wings, cut two semicircles out of construction paper and glue one to each side of the paper plate.
- For the legs, cut two legs out of construction paper. Glue them to the bottom of the board.
- For the beak, cut a diamond shape out of construction paper and fold it in half to make a triangle. Glue one half in the center of the paper plate.
- Draw two eyes or add googly eyes.
4. Count, compare and talk about quantity. Compare the legs of the animals and rank them from the most to the least. Ask your child questions like, “How many legs does the spider have? How many legs does the pig have? Which animal has the most legs? Which animal has more legs than the pig? Which animals have fewer legs than the spider? How many legs are there in all? “
Keep the conversation going
- Make index cards with the numbers 8, 4 and 2. Match the animal with the number of legs. What other animals have two, four and eight legs?
- Compare items in your home. Are there more bowls or plates? Are there more shirts or shoes? Are there more adults or children? Encourage your child to line up the objects to count and compare them. Use terms like more, less, greater than, less than, and equal to.
Book Suggestion
“Eggs and Legs / Huevos y Patas” by Michael Dahl, illustrated by Todd Ouren (age 3-8)
Kids practice counting by two in this fun bilingual children’s book.
Corresponding standards
Common Core State Standards Kindergarten
- CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.C.6: Determine whether the number of objects in one group is greater, less than or equal to the number of objects in another group, for example by using matching and counting strategies.
California Early Learning Foundations
number sense
- 2.1 Compare, by counting or matching, two groups of up to five objects and communicate “more”, “same as” or “less” (or “less”).
Early Learning Outcomes Framework