If you are looking for a free count and color worksheet, you are in luck. Today, we have a counting and coloring printable that supports development in kids of all ages, with functional tasks. Not only are we covering number recognition, math skills, and fine motor work, but also motor planning, visual scanning, visual discrimination, and more! You’ll want to add this count and color worksheet to your therapy lineup!
Count and Color Worksheets
Printables like the one below are great for preschool, kindergarten and every grade, depending on the needs of the student. We love coming up with fun worksheets that support a variety of skills and abilities using the same worksheet, so you can print out one set and then use it with your whole caseload in therapy sessions.
This is just one more of our free resources that support skills. (Like teaching coloring skills). Check out all of the free printables on the site for different worksheets, printable activities, and tools for a variety of skills.
Count, color, and play!
Elementary educators will love this count and color activity, too.
Make this printable just part of your winter plan. While not effortless, having a plan makes the long winter months a little more enjoyable. The OT Toolbox has several winter worksheets debuting this month to add to your treatment plan. Add this to the fun activities and crafts offered, and a well rounded plan can be developed.
Why use a count and color worksheet?
What skills does this winter count and graph worksheet address?
As always, an excellent activity is one that is effective, efficient, meaningful, relevant, and measurable. This winter counting printable works on multiple skills in one activity all by counting the number of pictures, coloring in the similar shapes and forms, and writing in the correct number of items.
Some fun ways to use this printable tool to count and color:
- Coloring inside the lines with full coverage (crayon control and fine motor skills)
- Cutting on the line, within half inch of lines, in the direction of lines – teach your learner to bubble cut or cut large circles around each object before cutting them into their finer finished product (scissor skills)
- Pasting using glue stick or drippy glue with accuracy (tactile defensiveness)
- Counting one to one correspondence
- Visual scanning, visual discrimination, visual figure-ground, visual memory, and other skills
- Categorizing by clothing type
- Sorting (like this color sorting activity)
- Fine motor strengthening, hand development, and grasping pattern
- Core strength to sit at a table, with shoulder stability and wrist support
- Following directions, attention to detail, turn taking, waiting, social skills, compliance, behavior, and work tolerance
- Visual perceptual skills to determine visually which shape the learner is looking for. Figure ground to be able to pick out these items from their background. Visual scanning to look at all of the shapes, visual attention to follow where the shapes are going to go.
- Bilateral coordination holding the paper with one hand while coloring, stabilizing and turning the paper for cutting skills
Various ways to use a count and color worksheet
How do I modify these count and color tasks for varied learners?
Most likely your caseload or class has young learners with varied levels of skills and abilities. Modifying this task for multiple users is a more efficient way to plan your treatment. Using a handful of tasks for the whole week is much more productive than 40 different activities.
- Color and laminate the page ahead of time, and precut all the shapes to eliminate cutting and coloring
- Add velcro dots to make this reusable, and work on task completion as well as fine motor control
- Place small objects such as beads, balls of play dough, coins, or other small objects onto each item that is the same on the worksheet. Then, count the number of each item and color in the bar graph at the bottom of the page to determine how many of each item were found.
- Work on number formation by writing numbers in each space on the bar graph. Start at the bottom by writing 1. Then on the next level, write 2 if there are two of that item found. Continue writing a number for each level of the bar graph to match the number of items found.
- Cut the shapes for the learner ahead of time, to eliminate cutting
- Print onto different colored or weighted paper for different visibility. Thicker paper adds to the stability when cutting, or it could improve hand strength cutting through thicker cardstock
- Provide different manipulatives for sorting and categorizing
- Limit the amount of supplies on the table so your learner has to use social skills to ask for what they need, or share with peers
- For your lowest level learners, perhaps this just becomes a scribble and color page, working on attending to a task
- Make this into a sorting task instead of graphing for early learners
- Add sensory, gross motor, or other fine motor tasks, to address more skills such as working on dressing skills, talking about winter, playing a winter game, graphing other fun things about winter.
Check out this Color Sorting post for more lessons to work on sorting, categorizing and graphing, and other hands-on math activities, without actually counting numbers.
Another great way to find resources on the OT Toolbox is to head to the SEARCH BOX. Type in keywords like, sorting, cutting, graphing, fine motor, winter, or counting. The blog archives span many years full of ideas including free download options, free printable worksheets, printable resources, PDF files, hands-on activities, and multisensory learning tools.
If you work in the school system, you probably know that the time between Winter and Spring break feels like forever. Try and make the most of this time with excellent treatment plans, winter activities, interactive play, and lots of hot cocoa.
Free Count and Color Worksheet
Want to add a free count and color worksheet to your therapy toolbox? Enter a valid email address into the form below. Or, if you are member of The OT Toolbox Member’s Club, log into your account and grab this coloring and counting resource from our subscription. You can add it to all of your favorite worksheets and printable materials inside the Member’s Club.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.