Socks are a part of a daily routine for mostly everyone especially in cooler weather. We put them on our feet in the morning and then take them off when we get home or before our bath. Socks come in all shapes, sizes, colours and patterns and they can sometimes be fluffy to keep our feet warm and cosy.
A Sock Washing Line
Children often enjoy finding matching pairs and pegging things up. You could provide a collection of socks of different sizes to sort into pairs. This then helps using everyday language to talk about size, comparing and ordering by size, colour and pattern and counting in ones and twos.
You can alter this game by changing how socks are pegged up e.g. focus on size and length, rather than colour or pattern, providing opportunities for comparing and ordering. You may want to include some odd socks.
You can ask them to talk about the socks they have found, what have they put on the washing line already? Have they sorted each sock into a pair or are there odd ones? You could talk about reasoning in to see once they have finished, is there room for more? Have we got enough pegs and how do they know we have enough pegs?
The Mathematical Journey within this activity includes counting, sequence, counting in twos, counting pairs as units. You can see pattern in each sock and matching the pattern together. Talking about measure, using language like big and small.