“Young children reinvent arithmetic. Spontaneously or by imitating their peers, they imagine new strategies for calculation. They also learn to select the best strategy for each problem. The majority of their strategies are based on counting, with or without words, with or without fingers. Children often discover them by themselves, even before they are taught to calculate.”
― Stanislas Dehaene, The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics
Play-Based Math Tasks for Young Children
These tasks engage children in play while building conceptual or procedural knowledge in mathematics. The tasks have been aligned to Texas PreKindergarten Guidelines and Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.
Block Towers
PreK Guidelines:
PK4.V.A.5 Child recognizes numerals 0-10. PK4.V.A.6 Child represents quantities up to 10.
Materials: blocks, die
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Instructions: Children roll a die and place that many blocks on their tower. They notice that some blocks are better suited to building than others (the pointy cone, for example). When the tower inevitably topples over, the children say, "Oh, well" in a sing-song voice and start over.
PreK Guidelines:
PK4 V.A.4 Instantly recognizes the quantity of up to 6 items without counting (subitizes); V.A.7 Child begins to understand that numbers 0-10 can be composed and decomposed in various ways to represent a quantity.
Materials: pony beads, pipe cleaners
Instructions: Children each make a bracelet with a target number of beads. Use only one color of bead for a bracelet. Then have children slide the beads to see the break-apart partners for the target number. For example, five can be thought of as 1 and 4, 2, and 3, or 5 and 0.
PreK Guidelines:
PK4.V.A.5 Child recognizes numerals 0-10. PK4.V.A.6 Child represents quantities up to 10.
Materials: feathers, pipe cleaners, craft sticks, straws, hair pins, golf tees
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Instructions: Children create a sculpture to represent a quantity. For example, if they choose the number four, they use four feathers, four pipe cleaners, and four straws to create their sculpture.
PK4 V.A.4 Instantly recognizes the quantity of up to 6 items without counting (subitizes); V.B.2 Uses objects, pictures, or verbal word problems to represent subtracting from a set of 5
Materials: small marshmallows, drawing of mouth with spaces for about 20 teeth, die
Instructions: Children place marshmallows in mouth for top and bottom row of teeth. Roll the die and remove that many teeth from the mouth. Place the removed teeth in a cup. Whoever loses all their teeth first is the winner.
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PreK Guidelines:
V.A.7 Child begins to understand that numbers 0-10 can be composed and decomposed in various ways to represent a quantity.
Materials: baggies, counters
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Instructions: Draw line down middle of ziplock bag. Place counters inside. Shake then record the break-apart partners.
PK4 V.A.4 Instantly recognizes the quantity of up to 6 items without counting (subitizes); V.A.7 Child begins to understand that numbers 0-10 can be composed and decomposed in various ways to represent a quantity.
Materials: work mat with section for each focus number (ie. 0-10)
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Instructions: Place dominoes face down on table. Students take turns drawing a domino, adding the number of dots on both sides of the domino and placing it in the correct “parking spot” on the mat. For example, if the domino has three dots and five dots, the domino is placed on the EIGHT parking spot. If a domino is already placed on the EIGHT parking spot, the new domino is stacked on top of it. Each person takes ten turns. At the end of ten turns, the person with the tallest stack on any parking spot is the winner.