Number Activities for Preschool

Are you looking for number activities for preschool? Number activities for preschoolers involves more than just counting to 10. Our pre-k students need to build their number sense, and feel confident with number formation, rote counting, number identification and more! By providing a variety of fun and engaging activities to preschoolers, we can help them develop a solid number sense foundation. Let’s take a deep dive into this critical skill and I’ll show you all of the materials that I use to teach number sense to pre-k students.

The first thing I have my preschoolers master is number identification. I think this is a great opportunity to begin practicing number formation. I do not expect them to master this yet, but through the use of hands-on activities, we can introduce both skills simultaneously.

Number Matching Activities for Preschoolers

Matching numbers is the perfect introductory activity. Preschoolers will start to recognize the shapes that form each number as they match them up. They do not need to know the names of each number to be successful with this type of activity.  Here is Buggy for Numbers, a matching game that allows students to self-check their work. With the use of images behind the numbers, children can easily see if they have matched the correct numbers. It also adds a fun element, as they feel as if they are doing a puzzle, rather than a math task.

Incorporating sensory bins is another way to make number activities for preschoolers fun and engaging. Alien Invasion is a space themed sensory bin that I made using dried black beans play-doh shaped into stars and planets. Inside the bin I have planets with the numbers 1-10 on them. Each preschooler gets a number board and they must match the planets to the correct box on their board. I use velcro dots on both the planets and the boards to stop the pieces from moving and eliminate frustration.

Number Recognition Activities for Preschool

Another great hands-on preschool activity for number identification and formation, are my Trace that Number &Build that Number Cards. I love to use these with my fast finishers or as math warm-up activities. These even make great math centers. Preschoolers can practice tracing the numbers, and learning proper number formation by following the lines on the cards. They can also have fun with other materials like play-doh by building the numbers within the bubble number cards.

Counting Activities for Pre K

While students are working on identifying numbers, they can also practice counting to 10 with different engaging number activities. I love these math games because they incorporate both skills, and have an element of fine motor work.

Pom Pom Count is a great math center that works on number identification, counting objects to 10, and fine motor skills. There is even the option of differentiating for your advanced learners and having them put the number cards in order. Children read each number on the card, and then count out the appropriate amount of pom poms. Dots on each card will help guide them to be successful with this activity. I love using these

 

Number Sense Activities for Preschool

Number and Counting Activities for Preschool

Another great number activity for preschool involves five frames. It is important to expose children to a variety of ways to represent numbers. This will help their overall number sense and fluency. Bow Wow Boards is a number activity that uses five frames and asks your preschool student to identify a number, use manipulatives for representing the number, and then trace the number. This one math activity alone covers number identification, counting objects, and number formation.

Here are a few other ten frames number activities for preschool that will help them with number sense.

Number Learning Activities for Preschoolers

After we have practiced all of these number activities, my students have always shown tremendous growth. I’ve compiled all of these activities into one download to make your life easier. The download includes everything you need to successfully implement these activities and more.

Also included in this download:

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Attribute Sorts: 3 different sorts included to help students recognize and group objects by either color, number of objects or shape
Color Centers: Color puzzles and color sorts (not pictured) help students build fluency with recognizing colors and their names

Ketchup & Mustard Number Match: Students build fluency with recognizing numbers 0-20 by matching ketchup bottles and mustard bottles with the same number. A recording sheet is included
Martian Match: Match the Martian to the correct UFO by finding matching numbers. Cards for 0-20 are included
Number Formation Sandboxes: Pull a sun card and use your finger to form that number in the sand. A spinner can also be used (included) to determine how many times the students should form the number
Number Formation Boards: Practice writing numbers with dry erase markers and then use play-doh to form the number
Number Formation Mats: Tracing numbers, writing numbers, number words and more all on one mat!

Find the Fries: Read the number word and then pace the correct fries inside
Cookie Jar Counting: Count the chocolate chips and put them in the correct number jar
French Fry Counting: Read the number on the ketchup packet and match it up with the same amount of fries
Ordering Numbers 0-100: Pull an envelope and put the given cards in order from least to greatest

Make Ten School Buses: Use the ten frame school buses to practice making ten. Complete the word sentence for added practice!
One More One Less Boards: Build cube trains and then figure out what is one more and what is one less!
Ten Frame Counting: Practice filling in ten frame boards to match a variety of objects, such as, dice, numbers, tally marks, fingers and more!
Sorting Honey Bears: Sort the cards by matching numbers. The cards include ten frames, numbers, number words, tally marks and more!
Popcorn Numbers: Find the correct popcorn kernels for the tub! Practice reading number words, ten fames, dice, tally marks and more!
Monster Ten & Twenty Frames: Pull a card and use it to complete your ten frame!

Peanut Butter Jelly Addition: Match the peanut butter slice (addition problem) with the correct jelly slice (answer) to form a peanut butter jelly sandwich
Bubblegum Addition: Solve the addition problems on the gum balls to figure out which gum ball machine they belong to
Lemon Lime Subtraction: Match the lemons (subtraction problem) with the correct lime (answer)
Subtraction Clip Cards: Use clothespins to clip all of the subtraction problems that apply to the answer in the middle
Shape Puzzles: Build fluency with 2D and 3D shapes with a variety of puzzles. Students will learn shape names, number of sides, corners etc
Pattern Cards: Complete the pattern by finding the missing piece and placing it on the correct card. AB, ABC, ABB patterns included

Greater Than Less Than Ice Cream Cones
Skip Counting Seashells:
Measurement Cards:
Bear Number Bonds:

Analog & Digital Clock Puzzles:
Money Puzzles:
Base Ten Puzzles:
Number Boards:

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Word Work Activities That Improve Reading Skills

Word work activities are definitely my favorite part of the day. It is a critical part of our learning, and it truly lends to my student’s ability to grow as readers and writers. Let’s take a look at the importance of word work activities and ways to help our kindergarteners practice and develop phonemic awareness.

What is Word Work?

Word work activities can look different in different classrooms, but the concept remains the same. It is when we give students the ability to do hands-on work with different phonics skills. Word work can be an activity on beginning sounds, long and short vowels, cvc words, digraphs, word families, rhyming, and more. All of these things work together to help improve phonemic awareness. These skills are a necessity when it comes to reading and fluency.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Even if you don’t know what phonemic awareness is, you are most likely helping your students with this skill on a daily basis. This is when a child can hear and manipulate sounds. When a child knows their letter sounds, and they are able to segment and blend a word together, they are demonstrating phonemic awareness. This is the beginning stages of reading. Once a child can recognize that each letter has its own sound and they can blend sounds together, or take them apart, they can begin decoding.

Kindergarten Word Work & Phonics Activities

There are so many different ways to practice phonics through word work.  By using hands on activities you can increase engagement and help students retain the information and skills quicker. Let’s take a look at some ways you can begin to implement amazing word work activities to help your kindergartners master key phonics skills.

Word Work Activities for Letter Sounds

Using pictures is an excellent way to practice letter sounds. Word work activities that involve finding pictures with the same beginning sound are a great way to make sure students can hear each individual sound. One of my favorite word work activities for this is called Build That House.

With this game, students pick a house that has the uppercase and lowercase letters on it. Then they find the roof and door with pictures that have the correct beginning sound. This is a great hands-on word work activity to help students practice hearing and identifying letter sounds.

Word Work Activities for Beginning Sounds

The next step in building readers is to help them with beginning sounds. This is very similar to practicing letter sounds, but you can add additional challenges by having students also form the letters. I love to use Dry Erase Boards because it is not only engaging, but it also allows me to easily monitor student progress.

These are great because it encourages children to find the correct sound on the board and circle it, and create the letter with another manipulative. You can use playdough to practice letter formation or even letter magnets. I laminate these boards and have them use dry erase markers, which means we can use them over and over again!

Word Work Activities for Long and Short Vowels

Once my students have mastered consonant sounds, we move onto vowels. These are trickier to hear and pronounce. By incorporating hands-on vowel work, students can build fluency with long and short vowels.

We love the word work activity Vowel Caterpillars. With this phonics activity, children have to build the body of the caterpillar by finding the pictures with the matching short vowel sounds. It is a fun twist on a traditional picture sort.

It is also a great idea to use picture sorts for long vowel practice. Helping students recognize the difference between long vowel sounds is important to their reading ability. When it comes to long vowel centers, we love the phonics game Build a Sandwich. This game is perfect for any word work center or dramatic play area. Students must make a sandwich that consists of bread, tomato, meat, and cheese. Each of these items has a picture on them with a long vowel sound either in the beginning or in the middle of the word. Children can use the provided menu to help them, or do it all on their own. This is always a class favorite!

Word Work Activities for CVC Words

CVC words are our most practiced phonics skill. The reason for this is, if children can successfully blend sounds to read a CVC word, then they can begin to apply this skill to multisyllabic words. I invest a lot of time into building fluency with CVC words and it shows when we are doing guided reading! Some easy to implement, yet very meaningful word work activities include CVC Puzzles and CVC Word Building. These phonics games help students read and “write” cvc words.

Word Work Activities for Rhyming

When I progress monitor my students, I always find that many of them struggle with rhyming words. Being able to recognize and produce rhyming words is a key phonological awareness skill. Which is why it is so important to find engaging hands-on centers to help them practice this skill. Matching pictures that rhyme is awesome practice. This ensures that even non-readers can participate. It’s also great for children to practice hearing the rhymes as they say the names of the pictures out loud. Peanut Butter Jelly Rhyme Time is definitely a fan favorite! Students make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by finding the picture on the jelly side that matches the picture on the peanut butter side.

Word Work Activities for Consonant Blends

Consonant blends are easy to teach if you have spent a sufficient amount of time on letter-sound knowledge and cvc words. A consonant blend is two consonants together, that each makes their own sound. By helping students build fluency with common consonant blends, we are helping them build fluency with reading. This will make decoding longer words easier for them. Popsicle Puzzles are a fun phonics activity that allows children to find the correct beginning blend to each word. Picture clues help the students if they are struggling. I like to put the last half of the word in a pocket chart and the students will find the correct blend and add it to the beginning of the card.

Word Work Activities for Digraphs

Similar to consonant blends, digraphs consist of two consonants together. However, with digraphs, these two letters only make one sound. It is really important for children to know the difference because if they are trying to make each sound in a digraph, they will not be able to blend the sounds to make a word. Other than CVC words, digraphs probably are the second most practiced phonics skill in my room. I have noticed tremendous growth in decoding when students have memorized and built fluency with digraphs. We have a wide variety of digraph word work activities, but one I’d like to share with you is Dinosaur Digraphs.

In Dinosaur Digraphs, children take turns picking a dinosaur egg. Each dinosaur egg has a picture with a digraph either at the beginning or end of the word. They must place each egg under the correct digraph tree.

Teaching Phonics Activities

Teaching phonics to kindergarteners is absolutely key in their reading and writing success. Make sure to carve out time each day to teach and review phonics skills. Incorporate word work activities as much as possible. Hands on learning is extremely beneficial for the retention of information. You can read more about that here. If you want to integrate word work activities into your classroom but don’t know where to start, check out my full year of hands on phonics activities. This download consists of  35 weeks of phonics word work. The pacing guide lays everything out for you, so all you have to do is prep the materials and watch your students learn. As you work your way through each week, you will see your students reading and writing abilities develop and grow.

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So that is when I came up with a center idea that allowed my kids to do the same activities, but with individualized sight word lists. Once I implemented this new routine, I saw my students sight word knowledge increase tremendously. Here’s a sneak peek at the process and activities!

Kids are tested individually and given their own sight word lists. These lists contain only the words they have not mastered.

This post contains affiliate links. To read more about it click here

Here’s a list of materials you will need. You can follow the links to grab the items from Amazon!
*Soft Pencil Cases
*Markers
*Play-Doh
*Hard Pencil Cases: you can get these at Michael’s for $1 each
*Sand

*Alphabet Stamps
*Ink Pads

*All sections have detailed directions with pictures to help you correctly set-up and implement all routines and activities*

Don’t forget to pin this image so you can refer back to this post whenever you need!

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When I first started teaching, I wasn’t very comfortable with progress monitoring. I didn’t know where to start, what materials to use, or how to collect and store data. This obviously led to a lot of pitfalls in my teaching abilities. Creating groups was difficult, writing report cards took an insane amount of time, my IEP reports were vague, and much more. I quickly realized that if I wanted to use data to drive instruction, I had to begin collecting it from day one. Since then, I have worked tirelessly to perfect my progress monitoring tools and assessments. I have seen a tremendous increase in my students learning, the more I perfected my data collection process. It is directly connected to students success. So here are some of the things I have learned during my progress monitoring journey.

Progress monitoring is a term used to describe assessing students in a way that allows you to track their growth in specific areas. By progress monitoring, an educator can see specific areas of growth and areas of need for individual students and/or whole group.

• Understanding Student Abilities: By collecting data on each student you can get an understanding of their academic abilities. It will help you track trends for students. For example, student A may have a strength in math but struggles with phonics skills. Or student B is great with memorizing skills but struggles to apply them out of isolation.
• Tracking Progress with Grade Level Skills: Backwards planning is important when thinking about progress monitoring. Ask yourself: Where do you want your students to be at the end of the year? What skills should they have been exposed to and have mastered? After you have fleshed out these responses, find assessments that target these skills. From the beginning of the year, test students on this, even if you haven’t taught it yet. This will help you track progress. You will be able to see which students have mastered specific skills and can move on, and which students need targeted instruction for certain skills. I use this baseline bundle to help me track a full years worth of growth all in one spot. It is perfect because as a special education pull out teacher, I service students in grades k-2.

• Data Driven Instruction: After all of your assessments have been completed, take a closer look at the results. Look at them on an individual level and on a whole group  level. Use this data to drive further instruction. Specific things to look for include:
• Which skills are the class as a whole struggling with?
• Which skills have the class as a whole mastered?
• Which skills should you focus on next?
• Which skills need some more time and can be spiraled into centers or word work stations?
• Which students are ahead and need to be challenged?
• Which students are struggling with basic skills and need small group intervention?
• Which students are not making growth?
• Which students should be flagged for RTI?
• How can you use this information to differentiate lessons, homework and future class assignments?

• Creating Small Groups: Do you have small groups during the day? Think about what you are targeting in these groups and then use the data collected to appropriately place students. For example, during center time I work with a small group to focus specifically on phonics. These groups are determined by looking at my data, and I also use the data to determine which skills to practice with them.
• Flagging Students for RTI: If you are testing students on the same skills and notice that they are making little to small progress, you must begin intervention with them. Similarly, students who are falling behind in meeting classroom expectations should be flagged for intervention.
• Flagging Students for Evaluations: Have you provided RTI within the classroom and still see little to no growth? Continue to collect data on these students and reach out to other professionals within your building about next steps. This student could qualify for pull-out services, and if these next steps are not successful, starting the evaluation process may be beneficial to them.
• Writing Report Cards: Writing report card comments can be a challenging task, but it is our responsibility to be clear, specific and helpful in our comments to parents. If you are progress monitoring throughout each marking period, you can simply refer to this data in your comments. Telling parents that their child knows “most of their sight words” isn’t a useful comment. However, telling them that their child knows “70 out of 100 sight words” helps parents have a better understanding of their students academic standing. 

• Writing IEP Reports: If you are responsible for writing IEP reports, or providing your special education teacher with information on a child, having concrete data and numbers is very important. We are our students advocates so we must be knowledgeable on their growth and their struggles.  By referring to your data, you can easily paint a very clear picture of your student.
• Holding Conferences: Parent Teacher Conferences can be an uncomfortable situation, especially if you aren’t prepared. Collecting data and having evidence of growth and areas that are challenging, will make the task easier. 

Progress monitoring should happen from week 1. You want to utilize every day of the school year to help students grow. In order to do that, you have to have a sense of where they are and where they need to be. Though the use of different assessments, you should be collecting data consistently throughout each marking period. Additionally, if you are using a baseline assessment throughout the year to monitor growth in specific skills (the same assessment multiple times), then you should conduct that at the start of the year, and at the end of each marking period. This will allow you to see just how far they’ve come each marking period.

The post The Who, What, When, Where & Why of Progress Monitoring appeared first on Mrs V's Chickadees.

Now here is my favorite part. The tracker that I record all of the data on in the beginning of the year, is the same tracker I will use until they are ready to go to the next grade. I will keep ALL of their information on that one piece of paper! By doing this, I can easily look at it and see what areas are their strengths and what areas are their weaknesses. When it is time to write report cards, I pull out the tracker and BOOM-all of the information I need is right there…and I mean specific information. I’m not saying “Johnny knows most of his letter sounds” I am saying “Johnny is showing progress in his letter sounds. He now knows 24 out of 26 sounds (he is struggling with /q/ and /m/), which is 10 more letter sounds than he knew last marking period.” I mean doesn’t that sound like a teacher that knows what she’s doing? (wink, wink). This is also used to drive parent-teacher conference conversations, and really go in depth on key skills with parents.  Whether you are a general education teacher, co-teacher, special education teacher or interventionist, this baseline is for you!

Using the Baseline and Tracker as a General Education Teacher

So as a general education teacher it can be really challenging to remember your special education students IEP goals, especially since you’re also trying to remember that Mary isn’t taking the bus today, Peter can’t sit at the peanut table at lunch, Joey needs an extra copy of the homework, and the 9 million other things that are swirling in your brains on a daily basis. BUT, that doesn’t mean it’s not important, it is SO important. So what I would do is, find the skills in my baseline that were connected to my special education students goals and highlight them on their tracker. That way I could check periodically, refresh my memory, and see where they stood with it. Constantly touching base with myself and holding myself accountable for targeting those goals in the classroom. Also, when it came time to write those dreaded IEP reports, I would use the data from the baseline assessment to give very specific information about their progress in the classroom. I was always told that I wrote such detailed reports and no other teachers did that, and the reality is, my reports took very little time to write because I was simply taking the data from my tracker and putting it into sentences. 

Just by quickly looking at the tracker above I can gather great insight about this student (Michelle). Here are some things I would note as the teacher:

Based on the September 2nd Results:
*Michelle has an okay sense of uppercase letter identification-I don’t believe she will need intervention, unless no gains are made by next assessment.
* Michelle has a good sense of lower case letter identification-no need to provide extra support in this area at this time.
*Michelle has very little knowledge on letter sounds– Keep this in mind when you come to this unit and consider beginning classroom interventions on this skill.
*Michelle has little to no knowledge of CVC words and syllables-Focus on the pre-requisite skills needed to access this knowledge, such as letter sounds

Based on the November 4th Results:
*Michelle has mastered letter identification-there is no need to test her on this moving forward.
*Michelle is making adequate gains with letter sounds-no need to continue intervention, but keep an eye on this to make sure she doesn’t slide back
*Michelle is making slow progress with CVC words-continue to work with her on this skill. Place her in a word work group with other students who need to build their CVC skills.
*Michelle has made almost no progress with syllables-time to start intervention with this subject.

-and so on and so forth-

Each assessment comes with more skills than you will ever need to assess. The assessment pages and tracker are customizable. Each skill is on a separate page, which allows you to print and copy ONLY the skills you want to use. Additionally, the tracker comes pre-made (for those ambitious teachers who do want to use every skill) and with an editable version. The editable version allows you to type in the skills in the order you want to assess!

Kindergarten Baseline Assessment HERE
First Grade Baseline Assessment HERE
Second Grade Baseline Assessment HERE
K-2 Bundle HERE

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