During our home preschool time the girls really enjoy hands-on math activities that feel more like play than “school.” This magnet math game appealed to both their love of exploring magnets and their love of sensory play while helping them practice counting and addition.
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To set up this activity we gathered a small bin of blue jean aquarium gravel, some of the pieces from our Learning Resources Super Magnet Lab set, and writing materials.
At first the girls spent time exploring. They spent quite a while dragging the magnets through the gravel to see how many chips they could pick up at a time.
Once they finished exploring freely we started our math game. To play they’d scoop, count and record how many chips they picked up. After a bit we decided to try and see whether they could scoop “more” or “less” than they did during their previous turn. Each time we recorded the amounts so the girls got some practice writing numbers.
We also used these materials to practice addition. To do so the girls would scoop once and place those chips in one group. Then they would scoop again and place those chips in another group. Then they would count how many in all.
Lovey also recorded the addition sentence before repeating the activity again.
Continue working on number sense skills with our free printable domino math activity.
More Math Games on Fantastic Fun and Learning
Ladybug Math Game
War Math Game for Kids
Vegetable Math Game
Night Sky Math Games
Jack and the Beanstalk Math Games
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That magnet set looks really neat!
Magnets are always fascinating and to incorporate them in learning math skills is a great idea. Thank you for sharing.
This looks so inviting and fun! Pinned 🙂 I can’t wait to try something like this with my toddler!
So clever! They probably don’t even notice that they are learning!
Popping over from Planet Smarty Pants’ Linky Party to say hi and let you know that I think you activity with magnets is really neat. I love it when kids can do something fun and learn along the way. Pinning as well.