dog math

Here's another math lesson from this week. This one was for Lou (preschool). I could have used it with the two young girls, but they showed little interest in dog math. First, I read him this poem.

Dog Tales

Two dogs at the park bench
Three more dogs came by
They sniff and they yip
but they act rather shy.

Four dogs by the oak tree
two dogs came along
A few quiet growls
but nothing goes wrong.

Three dogs on a leash
Four dogs on their own
They're playing and nipping
and sharing a bone.

Two dogs greet two dogs
with a high happy bark
a treat for a dog is a walk in the park.

Then I showed him these colored dog pictures. We read the poem again and used the little dogs to 'act' out the little stories. He liked to chose one color or size of dogs for the first part and a different color for the second part.

I had some blank dog paper, so wrote out the number sentences as we acted them out. This was of course, a very basic introduction to number sentences. I also had Lou sort the dogs according to size and color. You could easily make a set up using clip art.

Here are some other papers I had in the dog math file folder. I am thinking I used this with kindergartners. I taught one semester of kindergarten when I graduated, right before I got my job with second and third graders.


If I had used this with the two older girls (kindergarten and first grade) I would have made up some additional problem solving featuring dogs and encouraged them to create some of their own. We certainly could have taken this over to language arts working on the -og word family and reading a story about dogs.

Some other ideas to go with the whole dog theme:
Act out opposites with the little dog pictures, "the dog is on the table, the dog is off the table."
Make a graph showing several peoples favorite kind of dog
Make a list of things you need for a dog (practicing brainstorming)
Put that list of things in ABC order
Read to the therapy dog at the library (how cool is that!)
Play the dog game, 'Walk the Dog" We love this game, it's from Simply Fun.
Make a matching game with the same dog pictures
Read dog books, like Clifford or Biscuit
Make dog bone pretzels