Fingers are an amazing tool when it comes to counting. They are basically “built in” manipulatives. In my preschool classroom we use our fingers all the time in songs, nursery rhymes, to do simple math problems ect.
However, to make counting your fingers “different” I like to use visual fingers. Visual Fingers are a great tactile way to show quantities and they also can be a great teaching tool on how to correctly use your fingers when counting **because fingers can be tricky when putting them down while trying to count for little kids. We just used plastic food gloves (or you could use those thin kid winter gloves) and I had my boys practice scooping and filling the gloves with beans–you could use pretty much anything that can fit into the fingers (sand, rice, cereal, ect).
Then I wrote numbers 0-10 on little pieces of paper. For my 3 year old I just put a number at the top of the fingers and made him count out that many and put down the rest of the fingers. For my 5 year old, I used the cards and set up simple math problems. I said, “if you had 9 (he put up 9 fingers) and you took away 2 (he put down two fingers) count how many you have left?” They both enjoyed it because it was just a different way to count and sometimes when you put a little twist on an activity (such as counting fingers) it makes the activity a whole lot more fun!
