I may earn money from companies mentioned in this post at no cost to you. Thank you!
This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
If you’re not planning on an Easter theme for your preschool classroom, you’re missing out on a whole range of exciting activities to engage your students. There is lots of fun to be had catching Easter letter bunnies and tracing Easter eggs lines! For your math centers, this bunny spin and cover numbers game will help your students master their number recognition in time for kindergarten.
Preschool Number Recognition Game for Learning 1-5
The most amazing growth that you’ll see in every preschool group is how students begin to understand that a specific set of marks on paper and the screen has meanings that they can translate. With numbers, the idea that they learn to see the shape of each number and know the counting word to say out loud and that it references a specific number of objects (and that it doesn’t matter what size those objects are) is quite an incredible feat. As a preschool teacher, your job is to find multiple ways for them to practice this skill, and this fun preschool number recognition game will be popular as long as your Easter theme is up.
Preparing Your Counting On to 20 Math Clip Cards
For this activity you will need:
Paper
Printer
Spinner and tokens to cover the numbers
Optional: laminator
If you don’t have the materials needed, don’t sweat! You can get it delivered to your doorstep really quickly with Amazon Prime. You can get a 30-day free trial here.
Print and laminate the pages. Provide a plastic spinner or use a combination of pencil and paperclip. Your students will spin the wheel then identify the matching number on the playing mat. The activity continues until all the numbers have been identified. You can use pompoms, flat tokens, bunny mini erasers or other themed manipulatives you have to cover the numbers as they find them.
Extension Bunny Spin And Cover Numbers Tasks
Even your most reluctant mathematician will understand how to play this simple Easter number identification game. Players take it in turn to spin the arrow around the bunny, and then cover up (or color in) the correct bunny number. To extend these spinner math activities for preschool, try some of these ideas:
-
Make a bigger spinner – this bunny spin and cover numbers game goes up to 5, but many of your students will be able to handle going to 10 and beyond. You can make a separate spinner that covers 6 thru 10 or one giant spinner that helps them to practice all 10 numbers.
-
Write the number – the core goal of this Bunny Spin and Cover Numbers game is to help students read and recognize numbers. You can extend this to number formation by removing the covering component and having students write down the number that they spin. For an extra challenge, have them work with a partner who reads the number out loud for their partner to write down. Not only does this get them used to conceptualizing each digit, but they also get some key social learning in terms of taking turns and celebrating each other’s successes. Use my Food Friends Pick A Partner Cards to easily pair up your students!
-
Start comparing – finally, there will be a few students who are able to start thinking about the magnitude of each number (i.e. how many things it represents and that different numbers represent greater or lesser amounts). As they spin the numbers, you can ask them questions such as “Is 3 more or less than 4?”. At the start, you might want to have manipulatives (little Easter eggs or stuffed bunny toys work great with your theme) so that they can count, but eventually you’ll want to introduce number lines as preparation for addition in kindergarten. My Bunny Addition to 10 with Number Slider is a great follow up activity for this!