Valentine Number Sense

We've been using counting mat to practice number sense all year.  The students love them, but it was time to change the center up a little bit.  My friend Tami at Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers posted this great picture of her students sorting the hearts from the sensory table into little labeled buckets.  Genius!

Last year I bought these adorable little mailboxes from the Target dollar spot (on the great recommendation from PreKinders).  We hadn't used them yet, so I decided to label them with numbers and invite the students to sort the cards that way.

Some of our students do not have a lot of interest in sitting and completing the more "academic" centers.  They are content to play in the blocks, at the sensory table, or in dramatic play all day.  That's definitely okay with us, but we try to provide centers that are irresistible to attract them to those areas.

It worked!  As soon as they saw the mailboxes, our students wanted to count and sort the cards.  We started with the numbers 1-6 only, but that was a little bit too easy!  So I turned the mailboxes around and exchanged the cards for #7-12.  Perfect!

The students do so well with one-to-one counting at this time of year.  They are also learning about tens frames, tallies and base 10 blocks.

After all the cards were sorted, they opened up the boxes to check their own work!  (Their idea, not mine!)  So, essentially they counted all of the cards twice.  So smart.

If you'd like to print a set of cards and number mats, they are available here.

In March, we will do the same center with labeled pots of gold and shamrock numbers.

Have fun playing and learning with your children today.