Advent Calendars & Temporary Tattoos

What do advent calendars and temporary tattoos have in common? They’re opportunities to practice counting!

I see temporary tattoos as a fun way for kids to explore changing their appearance, like dressing up, so I have no objections to my daughter wanting to wear them every so often. I started to view them as actually useful tools when I realized that they were an easy way to practice counting. As we hold the tattoo and wet washcloth against her arm, we count to 30. I let her count as much as she wants or can and help her continue when she forgets. This lets her verbalize and hear the numbers. It’s also an easy way to enforce numbers over 10, which may be harder to work into everyday life than 1–10.

We practice visually identifying numbers through a Beauty Advent Calendar, which I bought entirely for myself without realizing the use as a learning activity until it arrived. The boxes containing the beauty items are lovely and the unordered nature of them (not 1–25 left to right, top to bottom) makes them great for a guessing game each morning. “Where’s number 14?” “Where is the 3?” My daughter likes looking at the boxes and identifying the numbers. I’m opening these items now just because I enjoy it. I may find a way to put little items in there for her in December as a regular advent calendar activity.

You may not have a beauty advent calendar of your own (though they are fun, so maybe consider something similar just as a ‘treat yourself’ sort of thing), but other things like advent calendars may be easy to find especially as the holidays approach.

Temporary tattoos are just an example of the small, sometimes silly ways that we can find to practice counting or other skills with our kids. It’s hard to break out of the normal patterns of only learning in ‘proper’ channels, but learning sometimes only needs intention and chance. Then the opportunities and means find us.