Hands-on activities tend to be the most well received in my kindergarten class with my students. Our program is play based so the focus is learning through play with lots of activities and materials that kids can get their hands on. Another type of activity that I am always excited to do with my class are adventures.
Adventures are when we take our learning outside of our classroom and move either throughout the school, or outside. This simple math number hunt activity is the perfect opportunity to take learning beyond the walls of the classroom.
Kids love getting to explore the school and visit places they don’t usually see. This hunt is a great learning opportunity and a chance to get kids up and moving. It’s also a great resource to have on hand on rainy days so you can get your children outside of the classroom, without going outside.
I love doing this number hunt after a math lesson or activity. The focus is on finding numbers outside of the classroom and in the real world. Often children don’t notice how many numbers they see outside of the classroom everyday. This math number hunt activity encourages children to look at their world in a new way.
Math Number Hunt Materials
The only materials you need for this activity are copies of the Number Hunt sheet and a pencil or marker for each child. The page is free to download at the end of this post. You can print a sheet for every child doing the activity or pair up children.
Since our kindergarten program includes junior kindergarten children (3-4 year olds) and senior kindergarten kids (4-5 year olds) I often pair a junior kindergartener with an older students. This way they can learn together and the older child gets to help lead the younger child.
The only other material that I suggest for this activity is clipboards. You don’t need them to do the activity, but if you venture outside and in different places around the school, the clipboards make it easier for children to mark off each number as they find it.
Math Number Hunt Activity Printables
Educators spend a lot of money on their classroom and materials, so I love giving resources away for free! I also know free resources make it easier to do these fun activities.
I have included two different sheets in the resource. One of the pages has numbers 1-10 and the other page includes number 1-20. Choose whichever sheet you feel is the best fit for your group. You can always start with the 1-10 page and use the more difficult sheet later on in the year.
Math Number Hunt Activity
Once you have your Number Hunt pages printed, you are ready to start looking.
The goal of the activity is to search for the numbers children see all the time in the classroom, outside of the room. It encourages children to notice that math and numbers are all around them. It makes math meaningful.
As children search, and find each number they check it off on their sheet. You can challenge children to find the numbers in numerical order, or mark them off in any order they find them.
As you walk together through the school, room numbers begin to mean more to children as they find a few of the numbers they are looking for. The numbers on dice in a library game or bar code on an item jump out as children look for each number.
Finding The Number on Everyday Items
Even numbers on a clock begin to have more meaning as children quickly find lots of number on their page. They may even notice that these numbers are in order around the clock.
Children will be excited to find each number on their adventure throughout the school. You will find that the larger numbers, greater than 10 become much harder to find.
You can make the game much more challenging by requiring children to find the exact digits, but as children are still learning their numbers, finding a room number 314, for example, can count as finding the number 14.
Once children have found all of the numbers on their sheet, they have completed their number hunt!
Activities like this tend to make children more aware of the numbers around them everyday. They may start to point out numbers as they find them on a walk with their parents or become more mindful of numbers on toys and things like cereal boxes.
The more children start to notice, and recognize numbers all around them, the more the math taught in class becomes meaningful.
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Check out a few more exciting lesson ideas to try in your classroom or home.
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