Count on Your Alien

Count on your alien to help you practice reading, labeling, and counting while playing a fun matching game.

• 1.

  Use Crayola® Scissors to cut dark construction paper into 10 rectangular cards and 10 square cards.

• 2.

  Generate a list of 10 body parts for an alien, such as antennae, eyes, arms, fingers, legs. Copy each body part word on the bigger cards with Crayola Metallic FX Crayons. Write numerals 1 through 10 on the squares.

• 3.

  Turn all of the cards upside down and mix them up. Pick one body part card and one number card. The number card indicates how many of that body part your alien with have. Glue number cards to the backs of body part cards with a Crayola Washable Glue Stick.

• 4.

  Design an alien on dark construction paper using the cards as a guide to know how many of each body part to draw. Use Crayola Gel Markers, Colored Pencils, and Crayons for your design.

• 5.

  Display aliens and cards with word sides up on desks or tables. Switch places and count each body part listed on cards, verifying answers on the backs.

Benefits

• Children practice counting skills and naming body parts of an alien they create using number and word cards.
• Children design an alien with the indicated numbers of body parts.
• Children work cooperatively to count and verify each other's artwork.

Adaptations

• Make up songs about your aliens. Choose a familiar tune (such as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb") and write lyrics about how your alien looks and where it lives. Hold a recital for classmates.
• Introduce multiplication using children's fingers, eyelashes, and toes. Children discover that multiplication is addition of same-size sets. Write multiplication problems for classmates to solve using their aliens.
• Imagine that aliens landed on your school playground! Write a silly account of what happened, where the aliens came from, and what they brought with them to Earth. Choose a metallic crayon color to name in their honor.
• Younger children and special needs students can draw body parts instead of writing word labels. They may also find it easier to set numbers and labels side by side when drawing instead of gluing them back to back.