Number games prek

40 Counting Games And Number Activities For Preschoolers

The basic foundation of math is understanding numbers and quantities. One of the best ways to develop these understandings, or number sense, is through handling objects and counting them.  We can listen to preschoolers recite numbers in order, but we want them to apply that to counting objects and understand that those numbers represent quantities of items. Counting games and activities encourage preschoolers to “play” with numbers and quantities and build math skills and number sense in natural ways. These ideas can help you build math and counting skills with preschoolers.

Counting Games and Activities

These 40 preschool math games include counting games and various number activities. They are perfect to help build counting skills and math skills in your preschoolers and kindergarten students.

1. Dog Bone Counting Game (Pre-K Pages) – This is a fun, hands-on counting game for students in your preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten classroom.

2. Farm Animal Counting Activity (Pre-K Pages) – What could be more fun than Counting Feet with farm animals?

3. Printable Counting Book (Pre-K Pages) – Identifying and naming numbers can be a difficult skill for young children in preschool and kindergarten.

4. Homemade Counting Board Game (Pre-K Pages) – This homemade game can help preschoolers develop math concepts while playing a game together.

5. Mouse Counts Game (Pre-K Pages) – Mouse Count inspired this activity that helps children practice counting to ten while also working on their fine motor skills – and it’s lots of fun too!

6. Fire Truck Counting Game (Pre-K Pages) – In this activity, children will explore fire trucks and firefighters with a counting game.

7. Penguin Counting Game (Pre-K Pages) – This Penguin Counting Game is the perfect addition to any winter theme, lots of fun for young children and great practice for counting, number sense, and one-to-one correspondence.

8. Ocean Theme Counting Activity (Pre-K Pages) – The best preschool activities allow children to be interactive and hands on while they explore new concepts. We’ve developed a fun, easy to prepare  ocean theme counting activity to do just that.

9. Nursery Rhyme Number Game (Pre-K Pages) – This nursery rhyme activity relates to “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and encourage number recognition and counting, important math concepts.

10. Digital Counting Activities Using Google Slides (Teaching Mama) – This resource has digital counting activities, which is perfect for the preschool and kindergarten age.

11. Button Counting (Busy Toddler) – Grab a deck of cards for this fun button counting math activity.

12. Football Counting Game (Sunny Day Family) – With a die, football printable, and some yogurt Danimals it’s a fun counting game your preschoolers will love.

13. Snowman Hole Punch Counting (JDaniel4’s Mom) – Use your hole punch to create these snowmen and work in a fun counting activity to go along with it.

14. Ladybug Busy Bag (Preschool Inspirations) – Work on counting with your preschoolers with these adorable paper ladybugs.

15. Cookie Counting Game (Still Playing School) – Have your kids practice counting chocolate chips with these paper chocolate chip cookies.

16. Counting Snowballs (Fun-a-Day) – This easy counting cotton balls activity is a great math activity for your preschoolers.

17. Race to Fill the Cup (Mom Inspired Life) – Have fun filling a cup with these adorable erasers.

18. Count and Compare (Stir the Wonder) – Use these fun Farm Animal Rainbow Counters to inspire young children interested in animals or to go along with a farm theme!

19. Little Miss Muffet Path Game (Preschool Spot) – This fun activity is based on the nursery rhyme, Little Miss Muffet.

20. Tally Marks with Pencils (Munchkins and Moms) – Have fun practicing making tally marks with #2 pencils.

Counting Games and Number Activities For Preschoolers

More preschool math games to enjoy! These counting games and number activities will be definitely enjoyed by your preschoolers and build their math skills.

21. DIY Counting Boxes (Parenting Chaos) – Label containers with numbers and then have your preschooler fill each bucket with the labeled number of items.

22. Play Dough Numbers and Counting (Little Pinch of Perfect) –  This activity is simple to set up and a great way to expose young kids to numbers and lets them visually see the difference in amounts. The activity can be adapted for different skill levels by making smaller or larger numbers.

23. Passing Car Count (Prekinders) – In this activity, we watched for red & blue cars as they passed by on the street. Children recorded the cars they saw by marking dots on their sheet with a corresponding color crayon.

24. Ways to Teach Counting (Prekinders) – Here are 15 ways to teach counting skills in Pre-K.

25. Ants on a Log Game (Teach Preschool) – DIY “ants on a log” counting game with the children then invite the children to draw their own ants on a log…

26. The Math Box (Teach Preschool) Create a simple math box and then watch as your preschoolers love filling it and practice their counting skills.

27. Counting and Addition Tray (Imagination Tree) – Set  up an open-ended maths activity for kids using counting manipulatives, play dough and a dice, in a dip tray!

28. Simple Montessori Counting Activity (My Mundane and Miraculous Life) – This simple counting activity with rocks, your child can work on number recognition.

29. Things to Count With (Pre-K and K Sharing) – Repurpose what you have and count items with your preschooler!

30. How Many Blocks Long? (Brick by Brick) – This is a fun activity where your preschooler can see how many block longs they are and practice counting as they do it.

31. Make Groups of Numbers (Teach Me Mommy) – This simple counting activity is easy to setup, can be played with one or more children and it is fun too!

32. Count and Smash Activity (Stir the Wonder) – The great thing about play dough besides that it is just fun, is that it is also a great way to work on fine motor skills, work in some math skills, and get some sensory input and it can be used in many ways for hands-on learning!

33. Activities with Counting Blocks (Educators’ Spin on It) – These are 8 math and counting activities for your preschooler to enjoy.

34. Where the Wild Things Are Game (Mom Inspired Life) – While playing, children practice counting, learn one to one correspondence and even get some fine motor practice.

35. Listen and Spray Game (Fantastic Fun and Learning) – This activity is great for counting practice but also for fine motor practice.

36. Race to Lose a Tooth Game (Toddler Approved) – This fun dental theme inspired activity with marshmallows is a fun counting game for your preschoolers to enjoy.

37. Roll and Count (Buggy and Buddy) – Here’s a counting math game for kids perfect for practicing one-to-one correspondence. It’s super easy to make and lots of fun for the kids!

38. Count Forward and Back Game (Fantastic Fun and Learning)- This preschool math game would be perfect during St. Patrick’s day and March in your classroom.

39. Build a City Game (Learning 4 Kids) If your preschooler loves playing with Legos then they will love this math game.

40. Mystery Mitten Tactile Counting Game (Preschool Toolbox) – Gather some real mittens and come play a tactile mystery mitten counting game to encourage early math intuition with tactile support!

Also check out the free Winter Play Dough Counting Mats and our other thematic counting mats.

Follow my Counting Pinterest Board for more great ideas!

13 Hands-On Number Recognition Games Preschoolers will Love

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Are you teaching your child to identify numbers? Here are some fun and interactive number recognition games for preschoolers and kindergarteners that you can play at home or in the classroom too.

If you’re wondering how to teach number recognition, the answer in early childhood is always through play.

Play is the natural way in which children learn. During play, children practice their skills and make sense of new knowledge and experiences. They develop early maths skills through play.

Remember that there are many aspects to learning about numbers. There is learning to count, which you can teach with games and counting songs, and then there’s one-to-one correspondence, which is when a child reliably counts one object at a time.

Number recognition is about the physical appearance and shape of a number, as well as what value it represents.

These number recognition activities for preschoolers are a great place to start teaching the numbers from 1 to 10, but once you get going you’ll quickly notice opportunities all around you!

This numbers game can be adapted to suit your child’s age, stage and interests.

Write numbers onto some toy cars and create a parking garage with numbered spaces. Your child can then match the number on the car with the number in the space and park the car correctly.

If he needs more of a challenge replace the numerals with dots or words so that your child can begin to recognise numbers being represented pictorially.

If your child is not particularly interested in cars you could do a similar game with animals, dolls, or whatever it is that your child enjoys playing with.

Put numbers on toy cars, or for a large scale activity; bikes and scooters. Create a car wash for them with clothes, brushes, water and bubbles.

Your child is then in charge of ensuring that the cars, bikes, or scooters come to the car wash and get cleaned in the correct order. As well as recognising numerals, this activity gives your child the chance to begin learning about number order.

This fairground classic is great for numeral recognition. How you set this up is your choice.

If you have lots of ducks and something to hook them with then perhaps you could create a replica of the fairground game, otherwise feel free to improvise with what you have at hand.

A net or bowl to scoop objects out of the bath could work well – the important thing is for your child to be having fun and looking at numbers. You could allocate prizes to certain numbers if you want to.

Sidewalk chalk is brilliant for larger-scale mark-making and games that get children using their gross motor skills.

Use sidewalk chalk to write out large numerals, then give your child a paintbrush and a pot of water and have them paint over the numerals with water to erase them.

Not only does this help your child to recognise numerals but also helps with the beginnings of formation.

Create a chart using beads and pipe cleaners. Attach 10 pipe cleaners to a piece of card and write numbers 1-10, one number above each pipe cleaner. Provide your child with a pot of beads and help them to count out the correct number onto each pipe cleaner.

This activity gives your child the opportunity to practice numeral recognition, counting, and assigning the correct value to each numeral. It’s also brilliant for their fine motor skills!

Label some buckets or baskets with numbers and provide your child with beanbags. Have your child step back from the buckets and take aim and throw the bean bags in.

You can do quite a lot with this activity depending on your child’s age, stage and needs, but on the most basic level, it encourages number recognition along with introducing the concept of more and less.

If your child is ready then you can model addition and play to win.

Label pots with numerals and provide counters, craft beads, pom poms or really whatever you have at hand and encourage your child to fill each pot with the correct number of items.

Again, this activity targets a variety of different skills as children recognise numerals, apply their understanding of value, and count out the correct number of items. Another good one for fine motor skills!

Children love to learn outdoors and on a large scale. Many teachers love using small number lines in the classroom to introduce the ideas of one more and one less but you can do the same outside.

Perhaps use chalk to draw out your number line and encourage your child to locate different numerals – “Stand on number 8,” “Hop to number 4” and so on.

If appropriate you could discuss one more and one less. You could also use the number line to encourage counting by inviting your child to find 1 item to place next to the number 1, 2 items to place next to the number 2 and so on.

If your child likes to be creative and artistic then this could work for her. Use nature to create the shapes of numbers.

This might mean drawing in the mud or sand, arranging leaves or stones or even noticing natural shapes in the environment. You could do this in your backyard or take a special walk.

Even better if you can take photos of your creations for your child to look back on. This allows your child to begin thinking about how numerals are formed in a fun and creative way.

Hopscotch is a real playground classic and it brings together a whole host of skills including gross motor skills.

Draw out a hopscotch grid and teach your child how to play, throwing a stone or stick to find out where he needs to hop to, and then hopping and jumping to the end.

As well as reinforcing the recognition of numerals this also introduces the idea of higher and lower and allows your child to have fun while working with numbers.

Hopscotch is my favourite number activity for preschool kids!

11. Potion Recipes

If you like messy, creative play then this one’s for you!

Create a couple of ‘recipe cards’ using measurements expressed as numerals, for example – 2 cups of water, 3 pinecones and have your child follow the recipe card, combining everything together in a big cauldron-like tub.

This taps into children’s imaginations and introduces the concept of measurement as well as number. Once your child is finished following the recipes you have provided perhaps he will be ready to create his own recipes, which you can scribe for him.

All you need is a nice big roll of paper with numbers on and a fly swat dipped in paint. You call out the numbers and your child must swat them, thereby covering them in paint! This is a really fun preschool number activity.

You can play just as easily without the paint, simply swatting at the numerals, but it’s far less fun than making a mess. 

This activity is extremely physical helping to really embed the learning, and as your child tries to speed up, her ability to recognise numerals will improve too so that she’ll soon be able to recognise them at a glance.

Bingo is a great maths game for building up number awareness and can be enjoyed as a family. To start off with you can simply use numerals up to ten but as your child’s knowledge expands so can your game.

You can use what you have on hand – a bowl and folded up pieces of paper, with highlighters – or you can go ahead and buy bingo pads and dabbers and bingo balls to add to the overall experience.

Here you will be building number recognition and as your child aims to increase their speed, she will get quicker and quicker at recognising numbers and linking them to the number names being called out!

I hope you’ll enjoy trying out these number recognition games with your preschooler! Here are some more fun math activities for preschoolers to build early mathematical skills.

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child psychology and more :: games with numbers

Mathematical magic. Ask a young child who has just learned to count within five to think of a number, add two to it, and say the answer. And then “guess” what number he had in mind. Demonstrate this trick from time to time and one day the child will understand how to become such a magician himself.

Personal account. On the road and in moments of boring waiting, connect the numbers with what is close to you. For example: “That we have one each - one nose and one son. We have two hands and we went to the circus twice. Three people in our family and three pigs in our favorite fairy tale, etc. ” Try to come up with something funnier. If the child wants to - try to draw all this. And do not limit yourself to the top ten, return to the game from time to time and count further.

Nim with numbers. There is a whole series of such games, winning algorithms for it and a class of mathematical problems. But for starters, you just need to play. Take the number up to which the child (perhaps with difficulty and with your prompts) counts. For example, 20. Offer starting from zero to add 1, 2 or 3 in turn to your total number. Whoever reaches 20 first wins. Try to slightly change the rules of the game, the victory condition.

A game of numbers on paper. One of my favorite games. It's like solitaire and it's very hard to put down once you start. And for a child, this is also an occasion to practice the beauty of writing and quietly learn the composition of the number 10. However, it is difficult for small children to write on their own, but they can help an adult play.

Another one of the school games. You need to draw a square on a sheet in a cell, choose a starting point inside it and try to go inside the square with a “knight’s move” in order to visit as many cells as possible (ideally, fill the entire square by visiting each cell once and marking it with an ordinal number ).

Sea battle. We started playing with my son when he was 4 years old. They took a smaller field, ships of two types, drove in turn. First, one draws the ships, the other shoots at them. After the game was over, they switched roles. For the grid, I took the numbers and letters that my son knew at that time. But it is even better to take numbers in both cases, the child will very quickly learn to find the coordinates.

Equalize the number. This game was invented by my son a few years ago. I came up with it when I was looking at the phone on the advertisement on the bus, but then we started playing it verbally. One participant calls three numbers, for example 8-4-3. The second participant must say what numbers will be obtained if a larger number gives a surplus to a smaller one. In the example - 5-5-5.

Quantities. In a school textbook, we found a task that we managed to turn into an exciting game. The second year in elementary school, children translate one value into another. And then finally a connection with the real world. Participants take turns naming the value of the parameter without dimension. And their opponent must choose the appropriate dimension and, perhaps, somehow argue it. For example: “Table height 9what?" - "Decimeters. Or Merov, this is the giant's table. Or centimetres, that's a dollhouse table.” “Key length 67 what?” - Millimeters. Or meters, this is the key that springs.”

Approximate mathematics. Much more important than accurate counting is the ability to evaluate an approximate result. Problems with large numbers in childhood are perceived as a game. For example, tell a child who can only count to ten the story that you had a hundred candies, you ate one and you have five candies left. Will he be surprised?

Count in columns. Many things appear in the school curriculum too late. But it’s quite easy to explain to a preschooler who has just learned to count beyond 10 how to add up in a column. And he will do it with joy and pride just like that, for pleasure.

Boom. Participants take turns calling natural numbers in order. If the number contains the number 2 or is divisible by 2, say "Boom" instead. Then you can try to do the same with the number 3 and others.

You can compete who will accurately determine the number of objects (without counting them) - a tangerine in a net, trees in an alley, beads on a string.

Board games. A lot of games teach counting. And not only special, didactic. My son learned to count in games where you could just do without counting and act randomly, but it was calculated calculations that ensured victory.

Sequences. Start with simple rows of numbers, such as “2, 4, 6, 8…” or “5, 4, 3, 2…”, inviting the child to continue them. Then you can move on to more difficult rows and even teach your child to invent them. And here is the sequence that children do better than adults: “1, 11, 21, 1112, 3112, 211213, 312213…”

Sudoku. There is a children's version of the game with a 4 by 4 field and numbers from 1 to 4. And then you can gradually complicate the task.

Many children enjoy “match by numbers” activities. On small numbers, the child simply trains the hand. But if the numbers are large enough and the child tries to figure out which one is next, this is already an arithmetic study.

Make the Pythagorean table yourself. In everyday mathematics, children constantly add, subtract, and divide. But they rarely multiply. Therefore, it is worth playing with the multiplication table on purpose. For example, write a number from 1 to 9 yourself. Write a row under it, counting “2, 4, 6…” as deuces. Below it is a row, counting in triplets “3, 6, 9…”. And so on. All this is not immediately, it is better to return to the table from time to time. The result is the most convenient multiplication table.

Computer game. There are many such games. But here I want to give a link to one of our favorite games for the composition of ten.

Hidden number. One of my favorite games from my childhood. We played with a large group in the yard. The host guessed the number, and all the participants in turn named their versions and found out whether their number was more or less than the one guessed. And the presenter and assistant came up with an outfit for the winner, it was only important to shout “without humor and marriage” in time, otherwise they could invent this. My son and I first tried this game when he was about 5 years old. Within ten it worked out well. Although in the company of children and inventing outfits, it is, of course, more exciting to play.

counting on fingers:

As an example, I want to offer games that we invented, counting on fingers. They are useful as gymnastics for the fingers, training attention and reaction speed, exercises in mental counting. But it seems that the main thing in them is their attitude to arithmetic, as to a fun game. And for a child, such games are not much different from other games with hands and fingers.

An adult shows a different number of fingers on one hand at an increasing pace (curving the rest). In response, the child should show the number of fingers, complementing to 5 what the adult showed. Having mastered with one hand, you can connect the second. If you ask the child not only to show, but also to call the numbers out loud, the composition of the numbers will be remembered faster.

The first participant shows, for example, three fingers and says “Three”. The second participant also shows a number of fingers, for example two, and aloud calls the sum of what he and the previous participant showed (in the example - “Five”). The third participant also shows a number of fingers, for example, four, and says out loud the final amount (“Nine”). You can keep going until someone fails. At the beginning, they play with the fingers of one hand, but then the second is connected.

Puzzle for children and adults - add numbers from the same number of fingers. That is, show a two with two fingers, add a three out of three, etc.

The host rolls the die, the task of the participants is to show as many fingers faster than others as there are points on the die. When they get used to it, you can roll two dice, having previously come up with funny gestures that should be shown when a number is greater than 10. My son liked the game very much, but he got tired of pointing on his fingers and he began to simply name the sum of points on two dice and shout “oink- oink" on 11 and 12.

Exercise - first count by bending your fingers, and then unbend your fingers and count in reverse order. First on one, and then on two hands. And try to do it as quickly as possible.

Another exercise is to count by twos to ten, simultaneously pairing the fingers.

An adult shows some fingers on two hands. The child calls the number aloud, counting the fingers of the right hand in tens, the fingers of the left hand in units. Or vice versa, an adult calls the numbers (33, 25, 52, 12, 50, 43, 3), and the child shows them on his fingers. My son was fed up with the five-man limit and lay on his back and added a leg to each arm.

An adult shows a number of fingers on each hand. The child either simply says how many more fingers are on one of the hands than on the other, or says how many fingers need to be added / subtracted so that their number on the right hand is equal to the number of fingers shown on the left hand.

We have also been using the even-odd game for a long time to resolve disputes. For her, two wranglers make bets - one for even, the other for odd. After that, the players simultaneously throw out a number of fingers. If the sum of the fingers of the participants is even, the one who bets on even wins, the odd one wins on odd.

(c) Yu. Lugovskaya

Games with numbers

Among the numbers there are such perfection and consent that we need to reflect days and nights OVER THE AMAZING REGULARITY.
S. Stevin

Kiktenko Natalya Vladimirovna, computer science teacher
MOU secondary school No. 7 of the Nevinnomyssk of the Stavropol Territory

How good is the BBU system,
and how simple it is computational schemes!
FUN ENTRY CANVAS:
ONE WITH ZERO NOT TEN HERE BUT TWO.

An elephant lives in our apartment
In the house there are two, entrance four.
Used to eat by the clock -
In the morning at eight, in the afternoon at sixteen.
He will definitely eat for breakfast
Thirty-two armfuls of hay,
After a morning walk -
Sixty-four rolls.
For lunch we bring him
Cucumbers one hundred and twenty-eight.
Tomatoes will be able to eat
Two hundred and fifty and six.
Eat five hundred and twelve pancakes,
And knead on kefir -
One thousand twenty-four.

Convert binary numbers to decimal and fill in the squares of the octagon. (clockwise from pointer)

136

161

134

192

242

140

236

128

211

206

241

142

Numbers are given in the binary number system. You need to convert them to the decimal number system and build a graph. What will happen?

1

101

10000

1100

infinity."

"YES, THE WAY OF KNOWLEDGE IS NOT SMOOTH"

Complete the actions and write the answers in the direction of the arrows in the unfilled cells.

1+1
10+1
10101+1010
4) 100000-1
100+1
11+10
7) 111-10
8) 1000-11
9) 100+11
10) 1010) 1010) 1010) 1010) 1010) -11
11) 1011+1010
12) 11100-11
13) 11010-101
14) 110-100
15) 100-1

can learn to think only by thinking ON ONE'S OWN.
MIKHAIL EMINESCU

Flying over the city of Krasnomordinsk, the Serpent Gorynych fell into a thick cloud of black smoke. Getting out of it completely soiled with soot, Gorynych sat down on a bench to rest.
And then, seeing each other's dirty muzzles, all three heads began to laugh loudly. Without seeing themselves, they would have laughed for a long time, but not even an hour had passed when the smartest head stopped laughing, realizing that its muzzle was not cleaner than the others.
- How did she guess?

Place all the numbers placed in this figure in the cells of the filled square so that the sums of the numbers along any horizontal and diagonal are the same and each of them is equal to 65.

Use the terrace method.

16

22

20

21

2

25

1

24

5

9000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4000

A known number is the sum of the numbers in the two cells below it. Following this rule and taking into account that on the first floor, in addition to the number 15, there are numbers 3,11,2,5, fill in the empty cells.

Each brick of this numerical pyramid is the sum of the bricks immediately below it. Fill in all the cells of the pyramid so as to come to the number 217 at its top.

Nine circles form the vertices of 4 small and 3 large isosceles triangles. It is required to enter numbers from 1 to 9 in these circles so that the sums of the numbers at the vertices of each of the isosceles triangles are equal.

15

Arrange the numbers from 1 to 10 so that the sum of the three numbers located at the corners of each triangle of the star is:
a) 14
1 b) 16

Slide 12

FIND THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING AND YOU WILL UNDERSTAND MUCH.

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