These Subitising Egg Carton Activities are a fun and engaging way for kids to learn and practice early years number skills. This everyday item makes math rotations cheap, fun and hands-on for Preschool, Kindergarten & Foundation Years kids.
Make these egg carton teaching ideas to use in your math rotations in a matter of minutes using everyday objects including, egg cartons, dice, counters and pompoms. Our egg carton maths activities are an engaging way to review, practice and consolidate so many early math concepts! Try them with your class today!
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Subitising Egg Carton Activities
Equipment
- Egg Cartons
- Tongs
- Dice
- Permanent Markers
- Pom Poms, Gems, Dried Beans or similar objects
Preparation
- Decide which digits you are focussing on making sure you have matching dice
- Prepare you egg carton by writing the digits you are focussing on, with a permanent marker, inside the egg carton.We used a six sided dice so we focussed on the numerals 1-6 .
- You can write the numbers in order forwards on the first row and backwards on the second row or mixed up with 2 of each digit, however you think works best for your kids (you could also write the numbers on a round dot label or sticker and stick it in the egg holders, if you like).
Egg Carton Number Recognition Activities
Subitising and Counting
Game 1
The aim of game one is to build the ability to see “how many” at a glance, or to be able to subitise the numbers 1-6. Students will also learn to match the correct digit and quantity to the number subitised. They will deepen their number recognition skills and learn to identify numbers in their different formats and understand that numbers can look different, (dots, digits and quantity), but represent the same thing.
In this math game kids are given the opportunity to practice and consolidate a range of early years math skills including:
- Subitising standard dot formations for the digits 1-6
- Counting including one-to-one correspondence, learning the number names, practising the counting sequence, learning that when we count we say numbers in the same sequence, and that the last number said when counting tells us “how many” (3 of the 5 Counting Principles). Read More about this here
- Matching digits to quantities for numbers 1-6
The focus is on subitising but this activity will also touch on counting and you may need to scaffold this for your students during this activity. When teaching lookout for these behaviours and address them by modelling the counting strategy to your students as a way to get the right amount.
It is important to make sure that your kids understand what counting is. Specifically, they need to learn when to choose counting as a strategy to solve a problem and how to use the counting strategy to help them arrive at the correct answer. Be on the lookout for these behaviours in your students during these activities:
- Often students may not know that counting is a strategy to help them solve a problem. they may even not realise when it can be used to help them. You may see these children just grab handfuls of counters to get a quantity.
- Some know to use counting but don’t quite know how it works. they may count out a quantity but forget how many they needed so they get too many or too few. These children will try to hide the extra counters by dropping them on the floor. And will not have a solution to having too few. They may even ignore the mistakes and hope that you haven’t realised that they have made a mistake.
- Be also aware that the children may be just saying numbers in a counting chant rather than being able to match the digits to the subitising dots and the quantity. You may need to adjust the numbers you work on and take the numbers out of sequence to check for this understanding.
How To Play
- Roll the dice.
- Find the matching digits in the egg carton.
- Use the tongs to pick up the gems, beans or pompoms (whatever you’re using) to count out the right number of items to match the number.
- Continue until all the egg holders have been filled.
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Count out the right number of Gems into the right compartment of the egg carton
Continue playing until all the numbers are covered.
Extension Activities
Number Recognition Think Board
We created a number think board template and some early years matching cards for an extension activity to help our students focus on what they were learning, rather than them just playing a game. During the activity we used these resources to help the kids make the connection that the different representations were just different ways to show the same number and build their number sense. They were given the opportunity to match more representations of the same number using:
- Ten frames
- Number words
- Non-standard subitising
- Colouring in a quantity
- Digit tracing
- Marking the number on a number line
- Number Recognition Think Board
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