#395: Count Clocks

How many clocks do you have in your house? You might be surprised where clocks are hiding. Does your microwave have a clock? How about your stereo? Coffeemaker? DVD player? Phone? Thermostat?

Do all the clocks agree with each other?



P.S. Daylight Savings Time begins today. Because it is almost spring and the days are getting longer, your clocks spring ahead by one hour. (In most places.) While you count the clocks, you can change their time, too.


Make this a family activity: Get everyone to guess how many clocks there are in the house, then go count them all. Who was the closest? Were there more or less than you thought there would be?

This activity promotes math skills and visual identification.

#382: Time Yourself

How fast can you run across the yard? How fast can you hop? How fast can you clean your room? How fast can you roll across the living room?

Time yourself and see if you can beat your own record!



Make this a family activity: Who is the fastest at what? Can they beat their own record?

This activity promotes math skills, speed and agility and healthy personal competition to improve and challenge one's self.

#351: Count Windows

How many windows are there in your home? Count them!

Yikes! That's a lot of windows!

To make it more challenging, see if you can count them all from memory--that means you close your eyes and try to picture all the windows and count them in your mind. Can you do it?

Have you already counted the doors in your home? Are there more doors or more windows?


Make this a family activity: Counting can be tricky when you have to go from room to room, get your whole family in on the game and see if you all come up with the same answer.

This activity promotes math skills.

#336: Dare to Compare

Take a look around. Are there things you can compare?


This is a great game for those boring times when you are waiting around somewhere. Hey, it's fun even if you're just looking out the window!

Here are a few ideas to get you started in Dare to Compare: What season is it? Winter? Okay, how many people are wearing boots? How many are wearing shoes? What about hats? If it is summer, you can compare things like how many people are wearing shorts. How many aren’t wearing shorts?

What else can you compare? How about Tall vs. short. Colours (Black pants vs. blue pants or Silver cars vs. black cars.) Birds. Or make it harder and compare more than one thing like Cars vs. Trucks vs. Vans. You can compare anything and everything!


Make this a family activity: Each member of your family picks one thing to watch for. They count how many they see. Then, get together and compare.

This activity promotes math skills as well as visual identification skills and detail awareness.

#329: Find Ten Red Things in Your Room

Can you find ten red things in your room? What about in the living room?


You can also turn this into a fun 'clean your room' game. Find ten red things and put them away. Go through all the colours until there is nothing left to pick up.


Make this a family activity: Do you all see the same ten red things in the room?

This activity promotes math skills and colour identification.

#293: Count the Pictures/Paintings in Your House

Look at the walls in your house. Do you have posters, pictures, or paintings on your walls? Count them! You can count pictures that aren't on the walls, too.



Make this a family activity: Everyone counts and sees if everyone got the same number.

This activity promotes math and visual identification skills.

#247: Measure Yourself

How tall are you? How long is your hand? How big is your ankle? How long are all of your toes?



Make this a family activity: See who has the longest toe. Who has the shortest toe? Who has the longest hair? Dare to compare!

This activity promotes math skills.

#124: How Far Can You Hop on One Foot?

How far can you hop on your right foot? How about your left foot? Can you hop farther on one? Can you hop backwards? Around things? In a circle?




Make this a family activity: how far can the rest of your family members hop?

This activity promotes coordination, balance and math skills.

#118: Find a Coin From the Year You Were Born

What year were you born? Can you find a coin from that year?




Coins are stamped with the year they were made. Take a close look and see if you can find the year. Is it the year you were born? The older you are, the harder it is to find a coin from that year as coins are periodically recycled by the mint that makes them.


Make it a family activity: Have the whole family search for coins from the year they were born.

This activity promotes math skills.

#69: Count Your Teeth

Hey, how many teeth do you have? How about your parents? How many do they have? Your friends? Siblings?


This activity promotes counting skills and self-awareness.

#18: See How Far You Can Jump

How far can you jump? What if you run and jump? What about on one leg? The other leg? Can you jump as far? Can you jump as far if you use both legs? How high can you jump?

This activity promotes physical activity and challenging one's limits.

#2: Counting Doors

Where are you? How many doors are there?

You can start by counting how many doors people walk through. Then look around a bit more carefully. What about closest doors? How many are there? How about cupboard doors? Everywhere you look, there are doors. Dryer doors, oven doors, maybe even a pet door.

How many are there?

This activity develops math and visual recognition skills.