This is a simple activity, but can be as indepth as you want depending upon the amount of time you have available. To prepare I went online and printed out pictures of cupcakes. I always print things for lessons on cardstock because it holds up better and then I get it laminated. It cost a little more, but it will hold up much better. There were tons of options online (all I did was type in "pictures of cupcakes"), but I only printed pictures that contained a specific number of cupcakes (one cupcake, two cupcakes, etc). Then in either Word or Excel type up number cards to match. Even though toddlers can't read yet I still include the number word beneath the digit so they are exposed to the print. After reading the book "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" by Laura Joffe Numeroff, I gave the children the pictures and number cards and explained the process to them. I only had to demonstrate with the first one for them to catch on. You can see in the above picture how the numeral one card was matched to the picture of one cupcake. I was pleased when, on her own, Lillian picked up the number cards and said "we can put these in order" and started putting them in numeric order (as you see below). It's important to give kids the freedom to explore activities like this on their own so they can come up with new twist like this too. As I mentioned earlier, this activitiy has many extensions you could do; do some activities with the letter C, color a cat or cupcake picture, sorting (these cupcakes have blue in them these do not or these have animals, etc), add two groups of cupcakes together and, the most obvious, make cupcakes!
