Learning doesn’t have to be hard.
In fact, learning can be incredibly fun! By giving children the chance to have
a great time while they are learning, they can discover a genuine love for
learning that will follow with them for the rest of their lives. These number
sense action ideas for the kindergarten level will help young children learn
all about numbers and counting in an exciting way that makes it easy.
Giant
Dice!
Children
love to throw. Children love dice. Creating giant dice that children can throw
across the room and then learn from? Brilliant! This activity is incredibly
simple to put together. Create 2 giant dice from cardboard boxes (tissue boxes,
maybe?). Draw on the numbers as you would see them on a regular dice. You can
start off easy by having the child count the number they get after throwing the
dice. Then you can make it harder by having the child add the two numbers they
rolled together.
Learning
With Colored Blocks
For this
activity you will need a set of blocks with different colors. Smaller blocks,
like unifex, work best as they are small and come in few basic colors. Set out
the blocks in front of the kindergartener. Tell them a simple addition
equation, for instance 2+2. They must put together the addition by grabbing 2
blocks of one color (let’s say red), and 2 of another color (blue). Connect the
blocks (or stack them together) and count how many there are. A great way to
learn addition, because what child doesn’t love blocks?
Puzzle!
Another
kid favorite: puzzles, of course! So why not put together a fun number sense
puzzle? For this activity you will need a mat with numbers and an empty square
next to the number (for the child to match). Then give your child a series of
small pictures with- for example- 1 fish, 2 fishes, 3 fishes, etc. Your child
will need to place the picture of 1 fish next to the number 1, and so on, until
all the pictures are accounted for on the mat.
Hopscotch
There’s
an adorable obsession with hopscotch in kindergarten-aged children. Turn
hopscotch into another learning experience by adding numbers to the floor and
counting with the children each step they take. You can even turn this into a
game, by saying ‘hop until you reach number 5’. Say each number out loud. This
is an activity that is seriously fun and of course, as an added bonus, you get
a little bit of exercise thrown into the mix!
Coloring
Pages
Have you
ever met a kindergartener that didn’t like to color? Me neither. That’s why
math coloring pages are great. Simple math coloring pages could be the
color-coordinated ones, such as use red wherever you see the number 1, and blue
wherever you see the number 3. To make it more difficult, add addition
equations to slots on the coloring pages. For instance, the frog could have 5+2
in the middle. On the chart, the color green will be 7. Therefore, the 5+2=7
will be formed and the child will color the frog with the correct color that
corresponds with the right answer to the equation.
What
child wouldn’t love these fun, yet very informative number sense activities?