FALL MATH PLAY

I'm going to be doing some workshops over the next few months and one of them will be Playful Learning. As I reflect upon my math program and gather resources for my new group of learners, I thought you might be interested in what playful math activities to offer children as an alternative to worksheets and graphic organizers. We use loose parts throughout our classroom and nature loose parts in our forest program. These flexible math play activities are popular, easy set ups and can be added to your math play trays.
While the children have been enjoying lots of fun fall connected play such as pumpkins, leaves and stick, our math focus has been on building stamina, community and counting skills such as conservation, dot number recognition... playing math games.
TEN STICKSThis partner dice game using a die and ten sticks is from Messy Maths by Juliet Robertson. Many of our favourite outdoor math games have come from her book.
We usually play this game in the forest with sticks or stones, but it can easily be adapted for the classroom using loose parts. We have been playing this game once weekly in the forest and offered it as an independent centre in the classroom.
Two children lay a row of ten objects between them. They take turns rolling a die and move that number of objects towards themselves. The object of the game is to have all ten objects.
CLOTHESLINE MATHIf you have not yet done clothesline math it is a keeper. Presently we are using it in the forest, but since the number cards are tented (cereal boxes were used), we can use a classroom table to top of shelf for this game. Their favourite so far is sequencing and mystery number.
We cut ten rectangles from cereal boxes and tent them. We print dot numbers on one side and numerals on the other side. We play the mystery number game, turning over a number when a child guesses. Keep going until the number is identified.
ROLL AND COUNTThere are plenty of free graphic organizers for this game but presently we are using our table Sumbloz as the numbers and they are rolling a die and stacking loose parts to make number towers. I have never done this before, having always used a graphic organizer, but it really is fun and the children are enjoying the concrete materials. It is also easy for them to set up and no photocopying or laminating.
ROLL AND STAMPThis is also a fun game. They roll a die, and use dot markers to make the mark on a large sheet of paper.  It's fun to watch them naturally count the dots to see who has the greatest number. This counting takes place over and over during the game and has been totally student led.
This can be a partner activity or a solitary activity. Lay out a large piece of paper or newsprint. Roll a die and dab that number of dots onto the paper. Keep going until the paper is full. It's fun with a partner because you each have your own colour and if interested they can add up how many dots they made.
Thanks for stopping by,