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Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree Companion Activities
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Cookie Jar Subitizing
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Snail Subitizing Math Game
Subitizing, the mouthful of a term for “being able to look at a set and know the amount without counting it,” is one of those cringey teacher words that makes parents’ eyes glaze over, you know? But it’s a critical math skill that we teach in Pre-K, as ugly as the word is itself. And one of our absolute favorite free subitizing games is Snail Subitizing from Life Matters Foundation.
Snail Subitizing is colorful and super cute, and requires few items to play. We laminate the game page and provide dice and either bingo chips or a dry-erase marker and eraser. This activity rocks because once shown how to do it, kiddos can progress through the board at their own speed.
Most importantly, however, is that the snails don’t always display the typical dot pattern represented on a standard die. We LOVE that it makes our kiddos think beyond the standard dot configurations they’ve come to know. It makes them think about how different combinations still make up the same number, and it reinforces knowledge of the concept thoroughly.
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Shorter and Longer: Measurement, Cutting and Sorting Activity
The Shorter and Longer freebie from Kindercraze is one of our early school-year favorites. Incorporating measurement, sorting and cutting, it gives the kiddos hands-on control over how they want to complete the activity.
To start, we provide our kiddos with a stash of precut construction paper strips (about 3/4 in x 4 in long), glue sticks and scissors.
We ask them to select whatever color strips they want and to cut each strip into two unequal pieces and then to sort and glue the pieces on the appropriate sides. They love that they get to pick the colors and number of strips, and they get to cut the strips wherever they want.
We generally don’t have any readers yet at the beginning of the year, so after we give our kiddos the instructions, we also draw a short line under the word “shorter” and a long line under the word “longer” to help them remember which side is which.
This is a great assessment vehicle not just for sorting and comprehension of the measurement concepts of longer and shorter, but also for multi-step direction following.
Let us know what you think of this freebie in the comments!
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Roll, Add & Build a Skyscraper City Math Game
We love to use dice games in math small groups with our Pre-K kiddos, and our Roll, Add & Build A Skyscraper City game is one of our favorites. We created it after a student noted how the side-by-side stacked cubes resembled New York City skyscrapers! Indeed they do.
You’ll need two dice per child, and a whole slew of linking cubes or small blocks that can be stacked. Then turn those kiddos loose to add, subitize, identify numerals, connect numerals to quantity and strengthen their one-to-one correspondence skills.
Ugh, isn’t it just like us teachers (and parents) to make everything fun a learning experience?
Get the free download below and let us know how your kiddos enjoy it!
Free Preschool Math, Science, Literacy, Reading, Writing and Art Resources for Teachers and Parents
