As you plan activities for your kindergarten, or preschool class, make sure to include lots of hands-on lessons, games and centers. One of my favorite to include is this Math Activity for Kindergarten.
The activity uses materials that you already have in your classroom and the printables you need are all available, for free, below.
Creating hands-on activities that kids will be excited to complete is a great way to keep kids engaged and learning. For this activity, children are challenged to create various numbers using loose parts.
This activity is a great way for kids to practice forming their numbers using materials different from a pencil and paper. There are also extension activities included for children who are ready for more of a challenge when creating their numbers, and counting.
For more printable math activities for kids including a Free Printable Math Game and a Making Shapes Hands-On math activity.
Although I used did this activity with my kindergarten children, you can use it with older, or younger kids at home, or at school.
Math Activity for Kindergarten Materials
If you already have a collection of loose parts for tinker trays, pull them out for this activity.
If you’ve never used tinker trays before, they are basically a collection of random small objects for children to use and ‘tinker’ or create with. There is no limit to what these materials can be.
When I gather materials for my tinker trays, I simply look through small materials and supplies I already have in my classroom. A few ideas for loose parts materials are:
- Gems
- Pompoms
- Beads
- Buttons
- Plastic Building Blocks
- Mini Erasers
- Small Gears
- Screws
- Brads
- Elastics
- Wood Slices
- Washers
- Stones
- Shells
- Popsicle Sticks
Tinker trays can be used for things like art or building projects and they are perfect for open ended exploration.
Make sure that you provide materials that are safe for your group to use. The examples of materials that I used below are just suggestions for what you can use and it is what I had on hand. You can use anything that you already have. Keep it simple, and free!
The printable “Create a Number” pages are available below. You can print the numbers on one page if you have really small loose parts, five numbers to a page or two numbers to a page. Chose whichever part of the printable that you feel is the best fit for your students.
Math Activity for Kindergarten and Preschool
Once you have printed your “Create a Number” sheets you can laminate them or put them in a page protector. You don’t have to protect your page, but it will help it to last longer.
If you are using the activity as a center, place the “Create a Number” pages and a tray with all of the loose parts out on a table for children.
Challenge children to create each number using the loose parts. Encourage them to fill the blacklines that create each number. Although the shape of each letter will not be perfect, creating each letters will help children with letter formation.
Children can work together to complete the numbers or challenge each child to create each number. Most of the number cards include numbers 1-20. If you are focusing on numbers 1-10, don’t print the higher number cards.
Math Activity for Kindergarten Extension
For children who have already mastered their letter formations, you can add to the challenge of this math activity for kindergarten and preschool. Since you are working with numbers and math, have children not only create each number using the loose parts, but challenge them to create a pattern with the parts for each letter.
The example below uses blue and yellow beads to create the number three and green and prink loose parts for the number four.
Another extension activity that can be really challenging for children, but encourages not only number formation, but also counting, is requiring children to form each number using the exact number of loose parts as the number.
In the example below, the number six is formed using six loose part pieces. Number seven is formed using seven pieces and so on. This is challenging because children still have to form each number, but they also have to use an exact number of pieces.
A popsicle stick becomes a number one and small buttons help fill and create a number ten. Make sure to supply lots of different shaped and sized loose parts.
Subscribe for Freebies!
Join Play Learn Inspire for free and gain access to the loose parts “Create a Number” sheets featured above. There are lots of activities you can do with the sheets and loose parts. There are 15 printable pages in the resource.
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