This common game is a way preschool teachers incorporate counting with a fun activity. The children stand in a circle holding hands and sing this song. At the end of the song, everyone falls to the ground and doesn't get up until the counting is over. The teacher may choose to have them count to ten before they get up or the teacher may ask them to count by twos or fives if the children seem ready for that next step.
Play the muffin tin activity with preschool children and they learn to recognize numbers, sort and count. The teacher writes the numbers one through ten on cupcake muffin liners with a marker. The liners are set on a table or placed in muffin tins. The children are given assorted items such as marbles, poker chips or coins. The children place the appropriate number of items into each of the muffin cups. The teacher may ask the children to place eight marbles into the cup marked with an "8" and five poker chips into the cup marked "5."
Send the preschool children on a scavenger hunt in the classroom. Ask them to count specific items such as the number of windows in the classroom. The list can have many things for them to count including shoes, tissue boxes, garbage cans, clocks and doors.
Caps and cans is an age appropriate counting game for preschoolers. Mark several large coffee cans with dots. The dots represent the number of the can. Have a bowl of bottle caps or some small item and ask the children to toss the appropriate number of caps into the can. If the can has four dots on it, the children try to toss four caps into the can.