Fingerprint Flower Counting

The other day my daughter brought home a cute project that she made at school. I was impressed with the way her teachers managed to incorporate art and math and decided to try the project at home with my other kids.
Supplies you will need:

• White paper
• Yellow and green markers
• Ink pad

Before you begin, you want to use your green marker to draw grass on your white paper. In my case the grass looks like a zig zag. Did I ever mention I am an AMAZING artist? Is there a special font for sarcasm? 

Next, add some leaves to the flowers.

Use the yellow marker to make the center of your flower and then number each flower from 1-10.

Provide your child with an ink pad and explain how they will be making petals on the flowers with their fingers. Then have them read the number on each flower and make that number of petals with their finger. So the flower with number 1 would get one petal and so on...

Little C started out great with one fingerprint on the number one flower. See, look how great she is doing. After this photo was taken she proceeded to put colorful fingerprints wherever she darn well pleased on her paper. She was engaged and having fun, so I'd say she got something out of the activity as well.

"A" finishing up her flowers.

Her finished product:

   

At this point I started helping the other girls with their projects, but when left with a piece of paper and an ink pad, "A" got her own ideas.

She was very excited about her rainbow hand prints.

And her rainbow hands.

As they were working on each flower I heard the kids counting the number of fingerprints they were placing on the paper. This was a fun and simple art activity that is much less messy than it looks. We had washable ink pads and as soon as the kids held their hands under some water all the ink washed away.