Students need a variety of activities to learn and experience numbers. Learning to count, identifying numbers, and understanding quantity are just the beginning. They need to be able to compare, and order numbers, skip count, find patterns, represent numbers, and more.
Here are some ideas of games/activities that you can do to help your students gain fluency with numbers.
- Speed Pass. The students in a group or pair pass the empty chart to each other after writing in the next number. The first team/ pair that fills the chart wins.
- Missing numbers on the chart. The students individually, in a team or pair, have to find the missing numbers on the chart or part of the chart. You can provide more or fewer hints depending on the level.
- Four in a row. The students take turns rolling two dice, one for the ten’s place and one for the one’s place. They form a number and mark it on the table. The first to get 4 in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally wins the game.
- Replace some of the numbers on the chart with pictures or shapes. Ask different questions about the pictures or shapes, compare them, find their numbers.
- The teacher counts aloud and stops randomly for the students to say the next number. Same with counting by 2,3,5. Keep a big chart to show the numbers which can be marked to start with.
- Give the students cards with numbers and ask them to stand in order, greatest to least and the reverse.
- Write a number on the board. Give the students arrows. Announce different numbers. If the number you announce os greater than the one on the board they point the arrow up. If the number is less than they point it out.
- Give the students numbers to place on an empty number line. I have a long one on the wall, 1-150, I just made empty 1-10 number lines and pasted them one next to the other.
- Use the 100 charts for counting rewards, days at school, days until Christmas, Halloween, and so on.
- Coloring, counting by 2,3, 5, and 10. Discuss the patterns and relations.
- Turn cheap 100 pieces puzzles into 100 chart puzzles by writing the numbers at the back.
- Create your own puzzles by cutting pieces of the 100 chart that students can put together.
- Use the table for adding and subtracting 1 or 2 digit numbers.
I am always looking for new activities for my students to experience numbers and enjoy practice time. Since the beloved Binions have been so popular with the older kids (multiplication/division activities). I decided to create a collection of digital and print cards for number sense to 200 and more. These activities are great for review and practice as well as number talks, warm-ups, and more.
The activities in this collection aim to help the students practice
- Decomposing numbers (adding groups to make the number)
- representing numbers with 100s 10s and 1s
- Skip counting by 2,5, and 10
- Comparing numbers
- Ordering numbers
- Odd and Even numbers
- Group numbers based on given information
- Find patterns
- Solve puzzles (guess the number)
Below is s sample of the digital (google slides) activities.
Digital version
Find the free and premium digital version below. The premium version includes 115 interactive google slides.
Print version
Find the print version of the resource (task cards) here video preview below.