Preschool Counting Activity with Cotton Ball Painting

This cotton ball painting activity is an easy way to encourage your child to practice number sense and counting.  It’s easy to set-up with lots of room for creativity – a great preschool counting activity you can do at home with your child today! 

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It’s been a while over here it feels like.  But, I’m glad to be back today with a fun and simple counting activity that you can set up easily and quickly for your preschooler or even toddler.

In case you missed it earlier, we’re focusing on slowing down this summer.  That means that it’s quieter over here many weeks, but not that it’s necessarily quieter in our home.  We’ve been busy adventuring, playing, and soaking in all that this season has to offer.

This counting activity with cotton ball painting was a fun way to practice numbers and still feel like we were doing arts and crafts.  We first tried painting with cotton balls last fall and it was such a hit, I knew it would be a fun way to change up our painting.

And it was a hit.

Preschool Counting Activity with Cotton Ball Painting

If you’re looking for a fun and easy way to keep your preschoolers learning this summer, this is a great activity to try!

Supplies

• Roll of craft paper
• Various colors of paint
• Clothes pins
• Cotton balls
• Art smock, optional
• Tape (or something heavy to hold the paper down on the table/work surface)

Instructions

• Roll out a long piece of craft paper onto a table or work surface, using tape to hold down the edges.
• Using a marker or pen, section off the paper into X number of sections.
  • We made 12 sections on our paper, but you can do more or less depending how much paper you have and/or what numbers you are working on.
• Number each section.
• Create your “paint brushes” by clipping a cotton ball into each clothes pin.
  • I did this for my son at first, but depending on your child’s age and fine motor skills, having them clip them is great fine motor practice!
  • We used a separate clothes pin/cotton ball brush for each color of paint.

• Pour paint colors onto a paper plate, egg carton, or other “pallet” to make the paint easily accessible.
• Using the cotton ball brushes, have your child paint the number of dots that corresponds to the number in each section.
• Practice counting each dot as you paint.
• Allow lots of creative freedom choosing and mixing paint colors for each section to keep it fun!

More Lessons for this Fun Preschool Activity

The primary purpose of this activity is to practice number sense and counting with your preschooler while also working on fine motor skills.

But, there are even more learning opportunities to be had, too.

Math Vocabulary

Once your child has finished the counting activity, you can talk about which sections have more or less dots.  Which section has the most?  The fewest?

Practicing Colors

Talk about which colors your child chose to use for this activity.  Can you name some other things that are those colors?  I always like to let my kids know how much I love their creativity when they do things like this.  It really is fun to see the colors they choose and they feel so proud to show their work off to me!