Maintaining my webpages has now become a part-time career for me, and the cost of site maintenance has steadily risen over time. So, if you benefit from this website and would like to see it continue, please purchase "Stormie's Stuff for Teachers," and/or make occasional financial donations where possible to help defer the costs of keeping my site on the internet.

NUMBERS, SHAPES, & PRE-MATH ACTIVITIES
E-mail for sharing your ideas: stormie@preschoolbystormie.com

From Stormie
Stickers Matching Game: Next time you're at a thrift store, search for a set of poker chips or checkers.  Buy two sets of matching stickers.  Place a sticker on each chip/checker.  These are so much fun to match because children can easily slide them around on a table top when finding matches or mixing them.
Variation: Save the tops from various plastic milk and juice containers to use for this which are also flat and can be moved around easily.  

Circles: Paper Plate & Bowl Art: Give each child a large butcher paper circle and 3-5 small white paper plates and/or bowls.  After decorating their plates and bowls, children then glue them onto their butcher paper rounds.

Circles: Snack: Bananas & Cereal Faces: Give each child a brightly colored paper plate then have them create faces on the plates from banana rounds and large-holed round colored cereals.  On a budget (and who isn't?), use plain white paper plates.  Variation: Children create faces on toast rounds.

All Purpose Shapes: One of the most often used teaching tool I have are "My All Purpose Shapes."  I cut shapes from various colors of posterboard and in several sizes then laminated them.  These can be used endlessly in a preschool classroom: sorting, matching, at group time, in the math center, individually, with fingerplays, with stories, etc.  Until you make yourself a set, you won't appreciate just how often you'll use them.

Squares/Rectangles:  Save lots and lots of boxes -- especially tissue boxes.  They can be used for so many things, but they are especially great for children to see the differences between squares and rectangles since so many boxes have both shapes on them.  Activities might include allowing children to figure out ways of stacking the boxes.  For example, can you stack all the boxes so that just the squares face forward?  How about upward?  Now, stack them with all the rectangles facing forward (or upward).  Or, children can decorate all the square sides of a box one way and all the rectangle sides another way.

Fine Motor: Shape Lacing: Cut shapes from thick cardboard.  Punch holes all the way around the edges of the shapes. Laminate them.  Children can now lace the cards (similar to sewing cards).  Make sure you punch the holes in far enough from the edges so that after they have been laced a few times, the lacing holes won't begin to tear.  One thing I've done that I think helps to prevent this is to place colorful reinforcements around the hole punches before laminating the shapes.

Two Games In One: Textured Shapes: Cut out several posterboard shapes in 3-5 different sizes.  Glue cotton, rope, or some other "textured" material just around the edges of them -- following the outline of the shape.   Then, when children "sort" the shapes by size, they can also "feel" the shape
To decrease the difficulty: Cut out shapes that are all the same size.

Stormie's Games: By the way, I offer a "Counting Cards" game in the "Teaching Aids" section of "Stormie's Stuff for Teachers.   

From Donna Larson:
Pre-Cut Shapes: As a variation to Stormie's "All Purpose Shapes" above, you can also cut shapes from pieces of foam bought at craft stores.  Sometimes, you can even buy them already cut.

From Kelli Stockford in Oregon:
Circles/Triangles Review: "We'll All Sing For Ice Cream": Make a large brown triangular paper cone.  Make circle shaped ice cream scoops from colored construction paper ( I even add black spots to white ones for chocolate chips).  Print familiar song titles on the back of the cone and each scoop.  You, the teacher, read the song on the back of the cone for everyone to sing, then post it on the wall.  Then children take turns choosing an ice cream scoop to place atop the cone, singing each song after you read the title.  This can also be done in reverse where the cone with scoops is already built and everyone removes a scoop, pretending to eat the ice cream.

From Pat Stajek-Vorwerk, Jackson, New Jersey
CD Circles: I get CD disks in the mail weekly.  I use them in my preschool classroom as stencils and the children have done crayon rubbings of them.
Another idea from Stormie: How about if we provide an eye-hand coordination activity by allowing children to slip the center hole of the CD's over a dowel rod or straw?  (Anchor the rod/straw into a piece of thick styrofoam to keep it sturdy.)  It would resemble the (now considered) old-fashioned turntable of a record player.

From Mandy Smith in Zambia, Africa
Fishing for Shapes: Yes, the fishing game (magnet on a string type thing).  But I cut out shapes of different colours and attach a paper clip to each.  The child is only allowed to keep her 'catch' if she correctly guesses the shape.  To extend this, the child can guess both the shape and colour.  (Without stressing winner or loser) you can then discuss most and least or few, many, most.  And of course, don't forget, you can do the very same thing with letters or numbers.

From Diane Flohr in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Number Recognition/Numerical Order Game: This is quick and inexpensive: Place a paperclip on each card of a giant-sized deck of cards (1-10).  (I print number 1 over the A on the aces cards.)  Each day I choose a different child to "fish" out a number card from our "pond" (blue box) using a magnetic fishing pole.  They hold up the card and tell me the number.  The child then puts it with the other "used" cards in its appropriate place on our "number line" (a row of cards placed in numerical order on my chalkboard sill).  Additionally, we count all the hearts, clubs, etc. together.  The children can't wait for their turn!

From Cassie Leatherwood, in Attalla, Alabama
Old Board Games: If you can pick up some old used board games from a thrift shop, many of their parts can be used as teaching aids.  For example, using just the number cards from the the games "UNO" or "PHASE 10," children can sort by number or color.  The dice from almost any game can be used for Pre-Math activities (counting the the dots, etc).

From Judy Nickerson
Bubble Wrap Shapes: Hi Stormie, Here's an idea for use at the easel or wherever -- using bubble wrap (packing protection material).  I cut the wrap into the shape we are learning about and tape it onto the easel.  The children paint the shape and then press a piece of paper onto the shape.  When they peel the paper off, the shape is stamped onto the paper.

From Debby, in Alachua, Florida
1. Laundry Detergent Tops: Save the tops off your laundry detergents for bingo chips.  
2. Counting and Number Recognition Game: Place differing amounts of bingo chips in containers (one container per child) and have a number search game with the children: They have to count the chips in their containers, and then when I call a number, the ones with that amount come forward with their chips and stand on that number on the floor.

From Sandy B.
Activities for Counting, Sorting, More vs. Less, Fractions:
*Cherry Pie: In advance, buy several bags of red pom-poms to represent "cherries," and spray paint the bottoms of mini pie tins a light tan color to represent "pie crust."  To do the activity, draw a tree on the chalkboard, telling the children you just returned from picking cherries so that they can make "cherry pie."  Print a number on the tree which will be the amount of cherries the "recipe" calls for.  The children then count that many cherries and place them in their tins.  Once I check their answers they are free to "bake and eat" their pies.
* Classroom Pizza: Buy larger pieces of red, yellow, and tan felt, a large pizza pan, adhesive magnets, and other colors of felt pieces (details later in this paragraph).  Trace circles on the red, yellow, and tan felt pieces and cut them out: The tan felt is the pizza dough, so it should be the largest circle.  The red felt is the sauce, and the yellow felt is the cheese, so once these slightly smaller circles are cut, you can crunch and try to re-shape them a bit for added realness.  Place about five adhesive magnets on the tan felt (dough) so that it will stick to the pizza pan.  Cut "pizza toppings" from the other colors of felt (green peppers from green, sausage from brown, pepperoni from maroon, mushrooms from gray, ham from pink, pineapples from gold).  To play a pre-math game, children can pretend to be pizza makers as orders come in for specific toppings on pizza (7 pieces of ham, 4 pineapples, etc.)  You can even have them do a half & half pizza, getting into the concept of less versus more.  (For example, ask the children, "Can you tell me which topping this pizza has more of?")  You can buy enough felt for children to each make his/her own pizza if you wish.  An easy storage idea for this game is a pizza box  :-)  This is sure to get imaginations soaring.......and the possibilities of how to play it are limitless!

From Karen Rexford, in Chelmsford, Massachusetts:
Musical Number Chairs: Hi Stormie.  I often play this non-competitive game with my young 4's.  It's the familiar "Musical Chairs" game, done with number cards from 1-10.  Make 2 of each card, then put 1 of each card on the chairs, and give 1 to each child.  (I just double them as needed if I had more than 10 in the class and I explain that there are 2 of a certain number and a seat for everyone.)  The game is fun, and no child is left out.  And I notice that if one child is having trouble finding his/her number, the class "special helper" assists in finding it.  (This game can be played using letters and shapes too.)  

-------------------------------------------------

Reminder from Stormie: If you would like to begin collecting ALL my current classroom ideas (each on a 4 x 6" index card), as well as new ones that I create, you can do so by ordering my "Activity Cards."  Click here to check them out.