How cute. Twenty-one sheep all facing to the right – a lovely sculptural wall piece found on a cafe wall in Cooma. Use this with your Early Stage 1 (Kinder) students as an estimation activity.
How many sheep are there? What’s your estimate? Look at the photograph for only a few seconds before hiding it. Can you explain to a partner why you think your estimate is an effective one? What made you think of this number? How can you check? e.g. Count out a group of 5 then estimate how many more groups like that there could be? Use a pointer and touch each sheep as the class counts aloud? Can you count backwards? Once you know how many sheep there are (21), start at that number and try counting back by 1s? Can you count back by odd numbers ie count back by 2s?
Try some addition and subtraction questions too. If there were 4 more sheep, how many would that be altogether? If you had 21 sheep and 10 were taken to another paddock, how many sheep would that leave?