Here was a fun way to combine Veronika’s truck play with a little early counting! She can count by rote up to about 20, but it’s still early for her to connect the idea that those rising numbers correlate to one more thing added each time.

We chose dominoes for the activity because we have lots of them and they fit easily into the truck bed. My hope was that physically them out would help her make the link. First, we just started filling up the truck randomly:

She eagerly counted along as we placed each domino in, and we made it all the way into the teens before she was too tempted to… dump!

For the next round, I challenged her to fill the truck with only a certain color. This meant we only counted as high as ten, and then it was time to dump. We repeated with the remaining colors.

For older kids, you can even make predictions about the point at which dominoes will start to spill out, without having to tip back the bed of the truck at all.

We played this version toward the end, piling in all the dominoes (confession: we stopped counting!) and watching them spill out. Chances are your toddler will stay happy with trucks and dominoes for some solo play after the lesson, too.