What could be more fun than playing with play dough?! Learn about three math activities that help children practice basic math skills using play dough and printable ten-frames. Read on to find out more!
Ten-frames are an excellent way for young children to practice basic math skills like counting, adding, and subtracting. These activities pair ten-frames with play dough for a tactile learning experience that will help children understand how numbers are structured from tens and ones.
Before you begin, grab some play dough and print out these ten-frames from Super Teacher Worksheets.
For this exercise, children will roll a die and make the number they roll with play dough. For example, if they roll a four, they will fill out four play dough balls on their ten-frame:
A ten-sided die would work really well for this activity!
In this activity, you will give your students a ten-frame with some of the frames filled out. They will need to decide how many play dough balls they need to make ten. They will fill out the ten-frame with the number needed to make ten and write the complete number sentence beneath their ten-frame:
Ten-frames are a great tool for practicing basic addition and subtraction. Students will need two ten-frames and a die for this activity. For addition, roll the die twice and make both numbers using the ten-frames and play dough. Add the numbers in the ten-frames. Write the complete number sentence.
For subtraction, roll the die twice. Use play dough to make the larger number in the first ten-frame. Make the smaller number in the second ten-frame. Write the complete number sentence.
There are so many ways to use ten-frames! What are your favorite ten-frame activities? We'd love to hear about them! Shares your ideas with our teaching community by dropping us a line in the comment section below.
For more ten-frame resources, visit the Super Teacher Worksheets ten-frames page!
You may also like: