During our T is for Tea Time theme we also used our tea bags and tea set for a little math practice. This simple game is great for helping preschoolers and kindergarteners practicing counting and comparing sets.
Materials for Tea Time Math Game
- Set of tea bags
- Set of number cards (you can use cards with dots, numbers, or number words depending on your child’s learning goals.)
- Tea set
Directions
- Pull a card. Identify the number.
- Add that many tea bags to one of the teacups.
- Pull another card. Identify the number.
- Add that many tea bags to the other teacup.
- Compare the two numbers.
- At this point you can practice various math vocabulary terms by asking different questions.
- Which teacup has more, the most, or the greatest?
- Which teacup has less, fewer, or the fewest?
If your child isn’t sure, have them take the teabags out and line them up to match one-to-one. In this example, there would be three tea bags in the left row and two tea bags in the right row. Seeing the tea bags lined up next to one another will give them the visual cue to help answer the question.
Extending the Activity
One way to extend this activity would be to include cards that include the <, >, and = signs. After step 6 above children could place the appropriate symbol between the two numbers.
Another way to extend the learning would be to combine the tea bags in both sets and identify how many tea bags in all. You could proved the + and = signs for this activity, too.
What other math activities would you do with these materials?
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