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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Even though it’s not a holiday that generates a day off school, Easter is a fun time in your kindergarten classroom for your students. The promise of untold chocolate riches and scavenger hunts for eggs drives up the excitement levels, so it makes sense to capture some of this energy in your academic centers. This fun missing number eggs game is a a good way for your students to practice their number sequencing skills (both single and double digits) as well as getting to talk about all Easter egg chocolate that they get to eat.
Sequencing Numbers In Kindergarten
Your main goal as a math teacher in kindergarten is to help students develop a sense of the number system. You’ll work on foundational skills like learning the names of the numbers (including those pesky teens!), how to form the numbers correctly with a pencil, and how to accurately count a group of objects using these number words. The next level of skill is to have a concept of how numbers relate to each other, which means that you’ll start talking about the relative size and order of numbers. Kindergarten students have to learn how to order a series of sequential numbers, and this missing number eggs task gives your students plenty of opportunities at this skill. You can have students say the numbers out loud to build their procedural memory for the number order or turn it into a clip card activity so that they can check their own answers to gain that immediate reinforcement that’s essential for learning.
Preparing Easter Egg Missing Number Worksheets
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Extension Activities For Find The Missing Number Work
The missing number worksheet packet is aimed at the end of your unit as it requires students to find a missing number from the middle of a sequence. However, there are plenty of ways to use Easter egg missing number worksheets to scaffold and extend your student’s learning:
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Hide the eggs – part of the fun of Easter is looking for eggs, so you can turn this missing number eggs center into a scavenger hunt by hiding the answer eggs around your classroom. Your students will need to work out which number they need to find before they’re allowed to start hunting.
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Sequence them all – for students who are struggling with the concept of magnitude as they sequence numbers, you should start off by cutting all the eggs out from each missing number worksheet. Your students can then practice putting all the numbers into order. You can scaffold this activity further by taking pictures of (or having actual objects) piles of mini eggs that represent each number. Students will quickly recognize that they need to arrange the numbers according to how big the pile is.
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Write their own answer – finally, you can use this Easter egg missing number activity to push those students who mastered it on the first turn. Start by having students write the missing number themselves given a selection of possible answers, then remove the possible answers to see if they can work out the missing number eggs by themselves.