A Simple Spring Flower Math Game

This post was contributed by Mary Catherine of Fun-A-Day!

Make Math Fun with a Spring Math Game!

Here’s a simple and colorful math game for Spring.  It combines math with both pretend and sensory play, all in one bright package.

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A Spring Flower Math Game

Materials:

• ceramic flower pots
• store-bought or homemade playdough
• artificial flowers
• dice

We used ceramic flower pots, homemade play dough from last week, fake flowers, and a die.  If you don’t have the same materials on-hand, no need to worry — just improvise!  For example, cups or bowls would work well in place of the ceramic flower pots and store-bought play dough would be just fine.

Steps:

Engineer and I played this spring math game together, but you could easily transform it into a game of three or more people.  To start, we each took a ceramic flower pot and placed play dough inside it.  Then we split up some of the smaller fake flowers, making sure we each had the same amount.

Engineer rolled the die first, got a two, and added two flowers to his flower pot.  I then rolled the die, got a three, and added three flowers to my flower pot.  We took turns until Engineer ran out of flowers and was declared the winner.  After the spring math game ended, we just played with the play dough and the fake flowers.  I pretended to plant flowers for my flower shop, while Engineer set about “making a garden” for himself.

Ideas for Extended Learning:

• Add an essential oil (perhaps lavender) to the play dough to engage the sense of smell
• Use more than one die to incorporate addition and subtraction
• Include real flowers
• Add seeds to the play dough for a different texture
• Use number cards instead of a die

Mary Catherine is mama to a budding engineer whose favorite question is “why?”   She is a pre-k teacher with a background in teaching kindergarten and a passion for early literacy.  Mary Catherine loves lazy days with her son, messy art projects, science fiction books, and dark chocolate.  You can find her blogging at Fun-A-Day!  Come connect with Mary Catherine on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.