Hands-on math through play...with a math card FREEBIE!

Children are incredible learners...and they all learn in so many different ways.

My students this year, although it's only been about a week, absolutely love learning with hands-on manipulatives and through play (yes, I can already make that conclusion!).

Our focus in math this week is on number identification and 1:1 correspondence so I wanted to invite the children to use natural materials found in our room to represent numbers.

Here's what happened:

After identifying the foam numbers on the carpet during a whole group lesson, a student went over to the math area, took the numbers and wanted to show that many using loose parts (more on this topic coming soon!).

He chose to use nuts and bolts to represent each number (since those are his favourite for fine motor practice - twisting them together).  However, he ran out after number 8 and chose to use small beads to represent 9.

Look at all the learning happening here!

This student put the numbers in the correct order and was able to show me how many were represented by that number!

The JK students were invited to stay with me on the carpet after our lesson to practice 1:1 correspondence using natural materials.  Many students chose to use glass beads.  By placing a glass bead over top a flower and counting out loud, I was able to determine which students could correctly count objects.

I made these 100-grids last year as I found many students were ready to explore numbers beyond 100.

In this photo, the student was playing a game with a friend...asking him what number was represented on his grid.  His friend knew that counting by 10's would help him get the answer much quicker than counting by 1's!

Another student worked on adding and taking away to get to the number 100.

Here, he is adding 5 to 95 to get 100.

I made these cards to go along with the 1:1 number correspondence.  For many SK's, this was way too easy!  Little did I know what they would do with these cards!

......

M.D.: "Look, Mrs. Albanese.  I made 30!"

Mrs. Albanese:  "How do you know that's 30?"

M.D.:  "I counted by 10's!  10, 20, 30." (pointing to the large group of cubes on his card).  "I have 3 groups of 10 so that makes 30!"

You can download your own 1:1 math correspondence cards for your classroom for FREE by clicking the picture above and remember...the possibilities are endless - they don't just stop at 10!