No Worksheet Wednesday

I know this post is a tad bit late as it should have been posted on Wednesday. But life had planned to keep me preoccupied with certain other things which couldn't have been avoided. Well now that i am done with the roller coaster ride( that too an unpleasant one !), i am back on the blogging scene, to share a wonderful math activity for No Worksheet Wednesdays.

I have been fortunate to learn interesting ways to teach mathematics to young ones from an organisation called Jodo Gyan  who work across different schools in India to introduce innovative methods to teach maths and science.

The activity below will help in teaching kindergarten children about sequencing numbers and will also help them to recognize numbers up to 10.

Start the activity by narrating the story about a little frog.

Write numbers from 1-10 on a chart or on the floor. Do make a river before number 1. Add flies on the 10th number. Use a die from 0-5 and choose one child to become the frog. Another child can pretend to be one of the school children who would roll the die for the frog.

If a child gets 5 on the die, then he/she would go and stand on 5 and jump till 10 saying the numbers, "6,7,8,9,10".

If you are drawing the stones on the floor, draw them at an appropriate distance from each other so that children enjoy jumping from one stone to another.

This game can also be extended to teach children the concept of counting on. If a child gets 2 on the die she/he jumps saying, "1,2". Roll the die again and if the child gets 3, then he/she jumps forward saying, "3,4,5". In this manner the child jumps till number 10 is reached. If you are doing this version of the game make sure you use the die with numbers up to 3, until children are comfortable with the concept of one more, two more and three more.

My kids love playing this game without realizing that they are learning. Do try with your students and let me know how it worked in your class.