A fun and hands-on game for toddlers through to early school-age children. Practice counting, number recognition, number writing and more. Great for role-play and as a set up for learning centres and play-based curriculum. See the bottom for handy tips to simplify or extend to suit your children's level. 

At age 3, my son does a lot of rote counting (where he can recite numbers in order from memory) but he is still working on the understanding of what numbers actually mean and represent. Properly understanding numbers, from the written symbol to the many different ways it can be represented is more important than rote-counting and takes multiple experiences over time to consolidate the understanding. Don't get me wrong, it's great if your child can count in order from memory, it's all part of the learning, but that doesn't mean that they understand numbers.

Understanding that a number (eg. three/3) represents a certain, consistent amount of something is a skill that children work on from early on. They are exposed to this kind of understanding through everyday life, like reading stories, (ie. Goldilocks and the Three Bears), talking about family (ie. 3 people in your family), eating and preparing food (3 spoons of honey, 3 pieces of cheese, 3 triangles of sandwich, etc.), while out and about, (look, there are 3 ducks! 3 red cars in a row, etc.) and so on.

As well as through these natural occurrences, we can set up experiences that allow children to practice working with numbers in fun and hands-on ways. The more children play with and are exposed the numbers, the greater their understanding will be. Having a solid foundational understanding of numbers 0 to 10 and what they represent is very important, as this is what your children will be building all their future mathematical knowledge and understanding upon.

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Welcome back to the "Playful Maths" weekly series brought to you by

  Learn with Play at home (us) and The Imagination Tree

Together, let's make MATHS FUN!

............................................................................................................

Last week I shared Counting and Grouping with Sticks.

This week we bring you another 2 Playful Maths Activities using Natural Materials. 

This week we are focusing on counting and playing with concrete materials.

Other skills involved include fine motor, number recognition, writing numbers, counting on, making patterns, grouping, sorting etc.

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Welcome once again to the "Playful Maths" weekly series brought to you by

  Learn with Play at home (us) and The Imagination Tree

Together, let's make MATHS FUN!

........................................

Last week I shared Ordering and Number Recognition with Paper Tubes.

This week we bring you another 2 Playful Maths Activities using Plastic Bottles. 

Today's activity from us focuses on "Counting, Ordering & Making 10" 

This activity also includes number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, counting-on and number writing.

Maths Jargon:

Making 10 (or knowing the numbers that go together to make 10 eg. 3 and 7, 2 and 8 etc.) is a fundamental skill for children to master for further maths involving our base 10 system.

It's very beneficial to have a good understanding as it will help with mental maths problems in the future!

(For example, If asked what 76 + 5 is? you would instantly know that to make to the nearest 10 (80) needs 4 more. So it's 1 more than that. 81... sounds long winded for something that happens without thinking hey?) :)

Ages: 2+

(M has just turned 4. See the bottom for handy tips to Extend or Simplify to meet your child's needs)

Materials: 10 Plastic Bottles (we used 1.25 litre ones), Paint, Brush, Balls.

(Tip: no time for painting? Just write the numbers on with a permanent marker or use large stickers)

Setup: Paint your bottles with the numbers 1-10 and set aside to dry.

I wanted to make them big and bright so that the numbers really stood out from the clear plastic.

When they were dry I set them up so they were ready for my daughter to get home from kinder

She was right into it straight away. 

(Even wanted to do it before a snack. That's saying something haha)

After each shot she counted how many were still UP and how many were knocked DOWN

As we talked about the numbers that were Up and Down I reinforced the fact that there were 10 bottles-pins all together by asking her, "how many bottles/pins all together?"

I suggested the idea of writing down the amounts that were Up and Down and she was very keen to. 

(Note: If she was not keen I would have left it. 

Forcing the learning would not make it fun and she would not want to play)

On her own she found the bottles with the corresponding numbers that she wanted to write and used them to see how to write the number.

Putting the bottles back up and ordering them was one of her favourite parts that she insisted on doing without assistance.

To help her with positioning I put dot stickers on the floor where the bottle-pins could go.

To assist with ordering and one-to-one correspondence you could write the numbers on the stickers.

Then she bowled (and counted and wrote and ordered and added and counted on....)

... and bowled.

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by just having fun bowling and trying to knock them down. Just being around the numbers and hearing them talked about in a real life and meaningful way like this will reinforce understanding without having to push any learning at all.

- You can Extend this activity in many ways:

• Having the child paint the numbers on themselves
• Write the numbers as equations  eg. 3 + 7 = 10
• Fill the bottles with varying amounts of water and rice to see how easily they can be knocked down or not
• Make predictions as to the number that will be knocked down and see how close you were.

- Mix it up by trying a variety of different balls. Which type of ball is best for knocking them all down?

- To learn new skills and to consolidate their understanding, children need to experience opportunities to practice these same skills over and over again. You will find many of our Maths activities practice the same skills like counting, number recognition etc. using slightly different materials. This is about making it fun and keeping it interesting for kids. Then, they'll want to learn!

- Below are the Paper Tube Activities from both Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree
(click on the pictures to go to the posts)

  
  

- Playful Maths. Below are the Egg Carton Activities from both Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree
(click on the pictures to go to the posts)

           



Don't forget to join us next week for more Playful Maths activities with Plastic Bottles.

Which Everyday Materials do you like using for Maths?

Happy playing,

Debs :)

Follow the entire series on our

 Playful Maths Pinterest Board.

-----------------------------------

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Continue reading...

Welcome back to the "Playful Maths" weekly series brought to you by

  Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree

Together, let's make MATHS FUN!

........................................

Last week we brought you 2 great maths activities using paper tubes.

This week we bring you another 2 activities using Paper Tubes. 

Today's activity from us focuses on "Number Recognition and Ordering" 

This activity also includes aspects of counting, one-to-one correspondence, counting-on, sorting and fine motor skills.

Ages: 2+

(M has just turned 4. See the bottom for handy tips to Extend or Simplify to meet your child's needs)

Materials: Paper Tube cut into smaller pieces (we used 1 wrapping paper tube for this), Foam number stickers.
Optional: Counters, playdough & chopstick.

Sorting though numbers to find the right numbers.

Fine motor skills to peel off sticker backing

Sticking on the numbers. We focused on teen numbers. 

Counting on to figure out which number needs to be made next.

Ordering to ensure all the required numbers are made.

Once they are all made. It's up to you how you use this fun manipulative.

Just making them includes tons of maths learning and practice which children need in order to consolidate their understanding of numbers.

Here are some ways you could use your Paper Tube Numbers

Mix them all up and find the numbers one by one and put them in order from smallest to largest.

We had great fun building with them. Adding extra elements of balance and coordination

Add counters, choose one of your Paper Tube Numbers and count out the corresponding amount of counters.

Children could fill the inside of each Paper Tube Number with the corresponding amount of counters/pompoms etc by counting them out..

Ordering vertically was lots of fun. 

Stick a chopstick (or any stick etc) into playdough and thread away.

Choose any number and have the child count-on from that number and thread on the next numbers.

You can have children count and thread numbers backwards or forwards depending on which way they're ordering.

When you're done with your Paper Tube Numbers, thread them onto a piece of string, tie the ends and they're ready for you to get out next time.

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by starting with numbers 1-3. Include higher numbers up to 10 as they are able.

(We focussed on teen numbers as that's where my child needs more work. We made a whole set though)

- You can Extend this activity in many ways:

• Make higher numbers as required
• Use single numbers on each tube and then place tubes together to create new numbers
• Use the number tubes to practice addition, subtraction etc
• Have children paint or write the numbers on the tubes themselves

- Mix it up by sticking the numbers on the tubes with them horizontally instead. They can then be threaded on rope or a broom handle, etc, horizontally. (Much harder to build with! haha)

- To learn new skills and to consolidate their understanding, children need to experience opportunities to practice these same skills over and over again. You will find many of our Maths activities practice the same skills using slightly different materials. This is about making it fun and keeping it interesting for kids. Then, they'll want to learn!

- Here are our 2 Paper Tube Activities from last week from both Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree
(click on the pictures to go to the posts)

   

- Playful Maths. Below are the Egg Carton Activities from both Learn with Play at home and The Imagination Tree
(click on the pictures to go to the posts)

           



Don't forget to join us next week for the latest Playful Maths activities.... with Plastic Bottles!

Are there any Everyday Materials that you'd like to see us use? 

Mention it in the comments and we'll see what we can come up with!

Happy playing,

Debs :)

Follow the entire series on our

 Playful Maths Pinterest Board.

-----------------------------------

Look where else we are. Are you following along? :)

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