Baking cookies is an activity that offers lots of math and science learning opportunities. The preschooler can help measure, pour and stir the dough. Alternately, you can slice refrigerator cookie dough into shapes with a plastic knife. Place the cookies on a cookie sheet. Let the preschooler decorate the tops with one to 10 pieces of candy or raisins, counting the pieces out loud as he goes. After the cookies come out of the oven, make rows of ones, twos, threes and so on. Students can also decorate unbaked cookies with only four candies a piece. Give them two or three different-colored candies, and let them see how many different color combinations make four.
You can play pattern games with or without any props because the math concept of patterns is nearly all around you. Music, bedtime routines, clothing, plates and sounds all create patterns. Play a clap-stomp game with preschoolers. Repeat a pattern a few times until the children can hear and copy your sounds. Add more movements or change up the beats as they get better at the game. Try one of the following patterns: "clap, tap, clap, tap, clap, tap," "clap, hop, clap, hop, clap, clap, hop," or "clap, clap, clap, hop, hop, clap, clap, clap."
Use whatever is at hand to create patterns: blocks, money, fruit slices or toys. Set up a pattern, and ask the child, "What comes next?" Lay out a pattern, but leave one item out and ask, "What is missing?" Be sure to let the child try her hand at pattern making and asking you to mimic or continue making her pattern.
Walking and talking with preschoolers provides a natural way to introduce math and science concepts. Depending on where you are walking, you could count cars, birds or bikes that go by. Searching for a particular color or shape on your hike could be the main focus. Try to pick out all the red things on one hike, triangles on another and circles or blue items on yet another.
Bring a bag, and let the preschooler gather small items found along the way. They can collect things like acorns, leaves, interesting stones, shells and seeds. Once back inside, they can sort and classify their items. Put each kind of item in a zip-close bag, and set them all in a shoebox museum. Or hang a strip of tape from the wall or bulletin board. Let the preschoolers arrange their special items down the tape.