A handful of little pom-pom lambs and two felt fields make one of the most useful counting games you can keep in a box. It is small, it is quiet, and it gives a toddler something hands-on to count, sort, and share out, which is exactly how early number sense is built. Tuck it in a tin and it comes along to cafes and car journeys too. Ages 2 to 4.
What you need
- A set of small pom-pom lambs. Craft stores often sell them ready-made around spring, or you can make your own by gluing a white pom pom to a smaller black one for the head, with felt ears, feet, and a pair of googly eyes.
- Two pieces of green felt, cut into field shapes.
- A small toy fence, if you have one, to set between the fields.
- A box or tin to keep it all in.
Making it
Cut two rounded fields from the green felt. If you are making the lambs yourself, that is a nice job to do alongside a child, though the gluing is one for grown-up hands. Once the lambs are dry and the fields are cut, the whole set lives in its box ready to bring out whenever you want a quiet ten minutes.
Ways to count
Start simply by putting the lambs out and counting them into a field one at a time, touching each as you go. That one-to-one counting, a number said for each lamb, is the foundation everything else is built on, and it takes plenty of repeating before it clicks.
From there the two fields open things up. Share a flock across both fields and count how many are in each. Ask for three lambs in one field and two in the other, then count the whole flock together to see that it is still five. Splitting a group and putting it back together like this is the very start of addition and number bonds, long before any of it needs a number written down.
Because it is open-ended, the same little set grows with a child. A young toddler is happy just moving the lambs from field to field, while an older one can count, share, and start to add. And when you are done, it all goes back in the box.
For more counting on the go, our Old MacDonald’s farm busy bag brings a few more animals into the mix, and our free animal coloring pages have sheep and farm friends to color once the lambs are packed away.