Squirrels are busy animals in the fall. Do squirrels do math? How many nuts have they squirrelled away? Since many of us do not have nut trees in our backyards, we’ll have to pretend that some blocks or duplo or cheerios are nuts to use for counting, adding and subtracting. For quite young “squirrels” it’s enough to work on this pile has more than this pile and some basic counting. Older “squirrels” can make groups or sets: make a group of 4 nuts. Can you do a set of 7? How about 2? Ask which group is bigger, which is smaller, which group has the most, which has the fewest. Try some sharing, “Here’s one for you, one for teddy, one for you, one for teddy.” This is an early form of dividing. Or some patterns: a green nut, a red nut, a blue nut; a green nut, a red nut, a blue nut, a green nut, now what comes? Let your child be a squirrel and put some cheerio-nuts in small containers. How high can you count? How high can squirrels count?
