16 Preschool Hands-on Math Activities

16 Hands-on Math Activities for Preschool”
At their young age, teaching math through interactive exercises will help pre-schoolers see the subject in a more dynamic and intuitive light. Kids can find themselves more invested in their math lessons if they get a chance to actively participate in them.
We’ve compiled ideas for 16 preschool hands-on math activities that you can use as a base for your own lesson plans and homeschooling exercises.

Catch and solve

This one works best when you have three or more pre-schoolers. You’ll need a ball to throw – preferably something large, like a volleyball. Scatter the kids around a wide room or in your backyard.
Practice adding by tossing the ball to one player while calling a number from 1-9. They then shout out another number and throw the ball to someone else, who must catch it and add both numbers together.
Players pass the ball among each other while adding the last two numbers together. See how large their final number can get!

Snakes and ladders with a twist

A classic game for kids to pick up a little math. Here’s how you can inject a little twist into the basic set-up: prepare a pile of simple math problems on strips of paper. Players roll the die, but before they move, they must take a strip and correctly answer its problem. If they get it wrong, their die roll makes them move backward instead.
If you don’t have time to set-up, there are math Snakes and Ladders games online as well.

Symmetrical snowflakes

Provide kids with coloring materials, popsickle sticks and paste. Prompt them to draw designs that are symmetrical on each side of a popsicle stick, and teach them how to stick three or four together to make snowflakes. Find out how many they can make!

Investi-graph

Take your kids on a short ride around the neighbourhood, or out in the yard. Tell them to count the number of various objects: blue cars, butterflies, black birds. Give them paper, scissors and coloring materials, and make cut-out figures of these objects.
Afterwards, build a graph with a column for each object type. For each object they saw, let them pin one cut-out on the object’s column.

Parking manager

Do your kids have a bunch of tiny toy cars lying around? Tape strips of paper with numbers on them (make sure they can come off!).
Mark a parking lot on the floor or on as shoebox, with equations on each space. Now, the kids need to park the car whose number is the answer to a parking space’s problem.

Baking buddies

If you want to teach your kids baking at home, begin by involving them in simple steps! Ask them to measure the right amount of flour, butter or milk in cups, tablespoons or teaspoons, and guide them to set the oven to the right temperature. Remember that their reward for doing the steps correctly is a delicious baked treat!

Clay counting

For a literal hands-on math activity for pre-schoolers, give them some molding clay and ask them to create clay figures of the numbers 1-9. You should also let them create 2D and 3D shapes out of clay for added fun.
It can help to give them a ruler or other tools to make neater and better-looking figures.

Toy physical exam

Here’s a fun hospital scene to act out if your little learner is already familiar with placing marks on a wall to see how tall they’ve grown.
Prepare a ruler or meter stick. They’ll be playing as the doctor’s assistant. Let them gather their action figures or dolls and take down all of their height measurements on a notebook. If you have a weighing scale, you can include their weights as well!

Bingo night

For a nice evening pastime, design some bingo cards. Gather treats – small biscuits, pretzels, chips, cheese puffs – in a large bowl and put strips of paper with math problems on them in a box.
Hand each of your kids a card. For each math problem you call out, they cross out the answer on their cards, and win a bunch of the treats when they get Bingo.

The clockmaker’s helper

Fashion yourself as a legendary Swiss paper clockmaker. Teach your new kid assistants how to make your famous paper clocks using pasteboard or cardboard, some coloring materials, scissors and a thumbtack. Ask them to suggest and make new designs to sell to your customers.

Number rhyme battle

Pull double-duty in teaching a little bit of English while your child practices memorizing the numbers 1-9. Tap, clap and make a simple beat, and create a simple rhyme for the number “one.” Then challenge your kid to do the same, collaborating on building a little song through the numbers.

Sticker picker

You’ll need a few card-sized pieces of paper of pasteboard for this. On each card, assign a number and a shape or object. Draw these objects and cut them out into small stickers with your students. Scramble them into a pile.
In this activity, they’ll need to rummage through the sticker pile and glue the exact number and shape of stickers into each card.

Paint the sum

Here’s a great carnival-style activity for your backyard. Inflate some balloons and inscribe a number on them, then position them in a line.
Mix some washable paint and water for a few squirt guns. Let your kids stand in a line some distance away. Call out a math problem, and prompt them to squirt paint on the balloon with the correct sum. You can use different paint colors to identify their answers.

Number hopscotch

You only need chalk and a die for this simple game. Draw a long hopscotch board on the ground, making ten boxes labelled 1-10. Your kids will roll and loudly declare the number on the die, then move that many spaces through the board, calling out the number they land on.

“Bring me what I want”

Another classic hands-on math activity for pre-schoolers that needs next to no preparation. Seat yourself as a great ruler, with your little learners as squires. If they complete a variety of tasks for you, you will promote them into knights. Each round of tasks involves finding, say, three objects that are red, to practice their counting and observation skills.
You can design neat little badges or cardboard swords as great rewards for completing this game.

Shake and see

Get a milk jar or a plastic container – cover it so you can’t see the contents inside. Add a few marbles or pebbles to it. Show the jar to your kids and give them a few guesses on how many objects are inside; see how creatively they’ll try to solve this mystery puzzle.
Spill the contents after their guesses and award a point (or snacks) for right answers, then hide away to load a different set of objects for another round.

Guided grocery shopping

Teach your kid a little about budgeting and personal finance early! Before going to buy groceries, give them a basic list of goods for them to find and add to your cart, such as 4 small fruits or 2 cans of beans. Set a “budget” for them; they should pick goods so that the total price is less than, say, $15 or $20, and hand them a pad and pen for adding sums.
Let them tag along with you for groceries. As you pass by the aisles, keep an eye on them as they find their goods and try to fit them in their budget.

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