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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Spring always makes for a great theme in your classroom. There’s so many ways for students to engage with it, whether it’s the idea of flowers blooming, babies being born or just the weather warming up. It makes sense to make your academic centers match your spring theme, from scientific observation of the frog life cycle to short reading texts about baby animals using their sight words. This frog number hop activity is the perfect math partner game for spring as it incorporates discussions about the life cycle and habitats of a frog along with the tricky counting concepts of more and less. Once your students learn how to play this frog math activity for kindergarten, they’ll be hopping back for more every day!
More Than, Less Than
By the time that springs rolls around for your kindergarteners, you’ll have covered a lot of the basics of early mathematics in terms of one to one correspondence (the ability to accurately count a group of unique objects) and a sense of the magnitude of the number scale (as numbers get larger, they represent greater amounts). This all sets the stage of early addition and subtraction, which in kindergarten is referenced by the language of more than and less than. You start with simple comparative sentences with models (i.e is 10 more than and or less than 6?), but then you’ll be able to quantify these questions (i.e. what number is 2 more than 7?). This requires students to have solid mental models, and this spinner math center turns practicing this skill into a fun partner game. To make pairing up your students a breeze, try using my Food Friends Pick A Partner Cards!
Preparing Your Spinner Math Center
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Extending The Frog Number Hop Game
Your students will quickly master this frog math activity for kindergarten (once they’ve worked out how to make the spinner work with a pencil and a paper clip!). To make it more challenging, try some of these frog number hop extension tasks:
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Increase the spinner number – the first task to make the game complex is to create a six (or even eight) section spinner where you can do +3 and +4 steps. This will help your students further develop their mental math skills as they play.
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Write equations – if you choose to play this math partner game for spring as an independent center, you can have students note down the equations that they used to play the game. For example, if they were on 17 and spun a +2, they would write down 17 + 2 = 19 as proof that they moved to the correct space.
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Create their own map – this frog number hop game should last 10 minutes or less which works perfectly for a short math center. However, you can give your students free reign to create their own spring themed maps, which they will often make longer and with more “special” squares. While you’ll need to make more time for students to play these games, their engagement will be much higher as they have the added ownership of playing and testing each other’s games.
Fun Books About Frogs:
Other Spring Printables You’ll Love:
1) May Spring Printable Worksheets Pack – 50 pages of free printable worksheets including a variety of literacy, math, and fine motor activities.
2) Spring Flowers Draw and Count – Students will need to draw the number of flowers stated on the page.
3) Spring Code Words – Solve the coded puzzle to find out the Spring themed vocabulary words.
4) Spring Counting Clipcards – This activity is perfect for preschool number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, and counting skills.
5) Spring Color By Number Pack – There are 6 spring-themed color-by-number pages included in this pack.
6) Bird Theme 3 Part Cards – Set up this free printable as proper 3 part cards for a spring literacy activity or as a preschool science center to help your students learn the names of different birds.
7) Weather Math Worksheets Pack – 9 different math worksheets inside this weather-themed activity pack for working on number order, shapes, counting etc.
8) Count The Kites 1-10 – Practice counting while strengthening their little hand muscles at the same time with this set of counting clip cards.
9) Raindrops Counting Frames – Keep your kids busy indoors with this rain-themed counting activity.
10) Missing Number Eggs – Practice counting from 1-20 with this cut and paste activity.
Educational Tools For Your Classroom:
Browse My Most Popular Math Printables:
1) Parking Cars Tracing Lines – More than 10 different tracing line patterns to choose from, all of which help with pencil control.
2) Scarecrow Arrange By Size – 3 different scarecrow-themed image sets that they will arrange from smallest to biggest.
3) Bumblebee Addition Game – Solve the sum and help the bee land on the correct flower!
4) Farm Shapes Mats – Use playdough, pompoms, stickers etc to learn 2D shapes.
5) Popsicle Stick Number Formation – Kids will love forming the numbers 1 to 10 when ice cream and popsicles are involved!
6) Valentines Printable Worksheets Pack – 50 pages of mixed literacy and math activities.
7) Zoo Animals Number Puzzle Strips – Complete these cute puzzles and learn the numbers 1 to 20.
8) Counting Colorful Bugs – This printable book will help kids count to 10 while also learning about color words.
9) Humpty Dumpty Numbers – In this printable game, your students will practice number recognition using 1 dice or simple addition when using 2 dice.
10) Build A Number Santa – Match the number to the correct number word, tally mark and domino to form a Santa Claus
