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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
In British English, the word “nursery” is used to refer to a school for young children, which suddenly makes sense of why nursery rhymes are so popular with American preschoolers. These nonsensical tales have been delighting young children for decades due to their simple rhythms, easy to learn lyrics and ridiculous storyline. This popularity makes for a great preschool classroom theme and you can find ways to weave all aspects of your classroom into nursery rhymes. These simple nursery rhyme math activities are a great resource to help students develop number recognition for preschool as well as giving you an opportunity to talk about and rehearse the story of poor old Humpty Dumpty.
Teaching With Preschool Dice Games
Dice have an incredibly large number of uses in the preschool classroom. From a math perspective, they teach about counting, both in terms of counting the dots but also in giving students a number of spaces to count in games, as well as an introduction to subitizing, where they recognize the shape of the 5 face as representing 5 without having to count each time. The act of picking up and rolling dice helps to build fine motor control and mastery over their muscles, and there are many preschool dice games that you can play to build a social element to your math centers. This roll and cover numbers game helps develop all of these skills, and adds in some number recognition for preschool as your students will need to match the digit to the number of dots on the dice to be successful at this game.
Preparing Crayon Fine Motor Number Mats
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Extension Activities For Humpty Dumpty Roll and Cover Numbers
The premise behind these nursery rhyme math activities is simple. Students pick either a 1 – 6 or 2 -12 Humpty Dumpty page and find some dice. As they roll, they’ll use either a pompom or mini eraser to cover up the number they rolled, and keep going until the entire wall is covered up. To push their learning further, try some of these activities:
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Race with a partner – bring some socialization to your preschool dice games by having students pair up and take turns rolling the correct number of dice for their game. The challenge is to be the first to cover up their entire wall. Focus on shaking hands and congratulating each other after the game as well as working on their number recognition for preschool.
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Verbal number recognition – if the idea of head to head competition doesn’t sit well with you, you can still introduce some speaking and listening skills to this Humpty Dumpty game by pairing students but only giving them one game board. Have them sit back to back, and one player rolls the dice and announces the number for the other person to cover up.
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Practice number formation – an integral step in number recognition for preschool is for your students to be able to write the numbers themselves. Give students a blank roll and cover numbers wall (white out the numbers and then make a copy) and have them fill the wall with the numbers that they roll.
Like this? Then you’ll love my 10 Nursery Rhyme Themed Literacy and Math Centers. These easy-prep games will get your students working on math, literacy and fine motor skills.
Games included:
1) Humpty Dumpty Roll and Cover Numbers – 2 playing mats included for use with 1 or 2 dice
2) Hey Diddle Diddle Number Puzzle Strips – Work on number order for 1-10, 11-20 and counting by 2s.
3) Sequencing Mats for 9 Rhymes – The 9 rhymes included in this pack come with 1 sequencing mat each where kids will be able to put 5 different pictures in order.
4) Jack and Jill Water Pail Number Match – Practice counting and number recognition with this game.
5) Baa Baa Baa Black Sheep Color Match – Flip 2 cards over at a time trying to find the same color pair of sheep until all sheep have been matched up.
6) Little Miss Muffet Tracing Lines – 15 different patterns to trace as the spider makes its way down to Little Miss Muffet.
7) Incy Wincy Spider Alphabet Match – Pair up the upper and lowercase letters bringing together the water pipe and the sun.
8) Little Boy Blue Alphabet Haystack Hunt – Print out the haystack letter cards and hide the Little Boy Blue card behind one of them. Kids will love shouting out the letters as they try to find him ‘under the haystack’.
9) Pat-A-Cake Alphabet Decorating – Use these mats to do some Q-tip painting or pin pushing to work on fine motor skills as well as literacy.
10) 1,2,3,4,5, Fishing For Sight Words – Set up these sight words cards in a sensory bin for kids to ‘fish’ out or they could also fish out the letters to form the sight word on the card.
Check it out for more ready-to-go fun!
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
