Counting Sticks

In the fall it's always fun to go on walks around your house and collect leaves, sticks, pincones and any other nature that you can.  You can make some beautiful artwork out of it.  We did this with our preschoolers again this year and they made some wonderful collages.  The children did not use all of their items for the collages, so there were some sticks left over.  I bought some paper cups from the Dollar Store and wrote the numerals 1-5 on each of the cups.  I put the extra sticks with the cups on the table and let the children figure out what to do.  Some of the children looked at the numeral and could recognize and count out the sticks.  Others would ask myself or their friends what the numeral was - and THEN count out the sticks.  And other would just put the sticks in the cups until it would fall over.  A little bit of physics/science learning to see just how much weight a cup can take before it topples over.