Tag: Basic Math

Fun and Easy Halloween Activities for Centers in Preschool and Kindergarten

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Halloween is such a magical time for young children, filled  with pumpkins, spooky decorations, and fun costumes. It’s also a perfect opportunity to introduce hands-on activities that engage kids’ imaginations, foster creativity, and support early learning. Here’s a couple of  easy Halloween activities and worksheet ideas for preschoolers and kindergartners to enjoy in the classroom or at home!

  1. PUMPKIN COLOR SORTING

A classic hands-on activity that helps with color recognition, sorting, and fine motor skills!

Materials Needed:

•Paper cut-out pumpkins in different colors (or small pumpkin toys)

•Small containers or bowls

How to Play:

•Have the children sort the pumpkins by color.

•Ask them to name the colors out loud as they sort them (e.g., “This one is orange!”).

You can increase the challenge by introducing a “mystery color” where kids have to find pumpkins that match a color you describe, like “Find the pumpkin that’s as yellow as the sun!”

Why It’s Great:

•This activity helps kids develop color recognition and basic sorting skills.

•It’s also a good exercise for hand-eye coordination.

2. BUILD A SCARY PUMPKIN FACE

Hands on activity that will help with shape recognition, fine motor skills, follow directions and shape orientation!

Materials needed:

•Cut out large pumpkins in different colors

•Prepare Small shapes (squares, circles, triangles, stars) card or paper.

•Bowls to hold the different shapes

•Paste/glue stick

How to play:

•Have children choose the color pumpkin they want to design.

•Let them choose the visual direction cue cards of what face they want to make.

•Offer the cut out shapes for them to paste to their pumpkin face following the direction cue card.

Why its great! This activity is great for shape recognition and manipulation, following instructions and fine motor skills.

3. CREEPY HALLOWEEN WORKSHEETS

Dressing up, what you want to wear, List your favourite Halloween games, List your favourite Halloween treats, Write a creepy story sheet, Color coded coloring sheet, Count and write the number of Halloween items they see.

Why they’re great!

fine motor skills, color recognition, writing skills, counting and number recognition

These Halloween activities and worksheets are easy, fun, and educational for preschool and kindergarten children. They provide opportunities for creativity, fine motor development, and early learning in a way that makes the holiday extra special. 

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Halloween Worksheets

Building a pumpkin face with shapes

FREE Halloween writing patterns

Summer Themed Number Games for Preschoolers and Special Education

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Fun with Numbers! Easy & Engaging Number Games for Preschoolers and Kids in Special Education

Learning numbers can be a blast—especially when we turn it into a game! Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or caregiver, these playful number activities are perfect for preschoolers and children in special education settings. They’re designed to build number recognition, counting skills, and confidence… all while having FUN! These summer-themed number activities are designed for preschoolers and students in special education, with a focus on visual supports, matching, and hands-on fun.

The best part? Most of these can be laminated and reused as file folder games, worksheets, or task boxes—perfect for classrooms, therapy sessions, or at home!

Materials Needed:

  • Printable ice cream cones with numbers (1–10)
  • Printable scoops with dots, ten frames, or number words

How to Play: Students match the correct number of scoops to the cone by counting the dots or reading the number word. Velcro makes it interactive!

Skills Targeted: Number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, visual matching

Math Games 1 to 10 Counting Activities:Number Recognition, 1-1 Correspondence

Materials Needed:

  • Printable beach scene or bucket
  • Cut-out shells
  • Number prompts (e.g., “Add 4 shells to the bucket!”)

How to Play: Give kids a scene and a number. They count and glue the correct number of shells onto the picture. Bonus: You can reuse this with different animals (like turtles or starfish)!

Skills Targeted: Counting, following directions, fine motor skills

Fun Math Games: Low Prep, 10 Frame Learning Activities

Materials Needed:

  • Watermelon slices with numbers
  • Seeds with matching dots or number words

How to Play: Kids match seeds to the correct watermelon slice. You can also make it a “puzzle” where they have to match pieces that fit together.

Skills Targeted: Number ID, matching quantities to numerals, visual discrimination

Materials Needed:

  • Printable sand pails labeled with numbers
  • Small images (like shells, flip-flops, or sunglasses) in sets of 1–10

How to Play: Students “sort” the correct number of summer items into each bucket. Laminate and use Velcro dots for a reusable file folder activity.

Skills Targeted: Sorting, counting, number sense

Materials Needed:

  • Printable suns with ten frames
  • Clothespins or cards with numerals 1–10

How to Play: Students count how many “rays” or dots are on the sun and clip or match the correct number. Easy to turn into a file folder or dry-erase activity.

Skills Targeted: Counting, ten frame recognition, fine motor coordination

Fun Math Games: Low Prep, 10 Frame Learning Activities

Materials Needed:

  • Sandpaper numbers or laminated tracing sheets
  • Sand tray or printed “beach” background

How to Play: Students trace the number with their finger or a crayon. Add a sensory element by tracing numbers in a shallow tray filled with sand or salt!

Skills Targeted: Number formation, sensory input, pre-writing skills.

💡 BONUS TIP:

For extra durability, laminate your materials and store them in labeled file folders or task boxes. Add visuals and step-by-step instructions for independence!

Wrap-Up: Summer learning can be low-stress and high-fun! These file folder games and worksheets bring sunshine into math time—helping children strengthen number skills while keeping things seasonal and playful. Perfect for your summer school setup or at-home activities!

For more Summer Themed Resources click the links below

Summer Fine Motor skills: Fun activity printable sheets

Summer Maths Activities

Sequencing Adapted Book – Summer themed

Fun Summer Activity sheets FREE

Tabletop Activities – Apple counting, Task cards and color sorting.

Same-Different-Big-Small Sorting

Fun Math Games: Low Prep, 10 Frame Learning Activities

Fun Math Games: Low Prep, 10 Frame Learning Activities

Special Education | Winter Fun Activities for Centers and workstations.

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We’ve been trying out our Christmas themed activities this week and have had lots of fun learning!

My little learners love hands on activities and was excited to try this one out on Monday!

They loved pulling up carrots to find the shape and feeding the reindeer. Seeing them so engaged and until all the carrots were pulled was well worth the effort of putting this resource together!

On Tuesday we tried some Christmassy number corresponding tasks! I thought I’d incorporated some pegs into this activity to practice our Fine Motor skills at the same time.

Pegs made the activity more interesting to engage my speedy students longer!

Wednesday we carried on the counting theme with these Snowman building cards, using cotton wool as pretend snow!

and a game of matching Santa to his black and white photo on Thursday!

Friday we had some fun and practiced our scissor skills on some festive shapes.

I’m pleased to say we’ve had a productive week of Christmas fun!

Reindeer Feeding Activity

Number Correspondence to 10

Christmas crafts and Activities

Spring Math Ideas for Pre-K

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Spring Math ideas for my Pre-K Classroom

I’m bring Bugs to my independent Math centre! I’ve added creepy crawlers to an interactive selection of pages that cover some basic math skills that my young learners can practice and enjoy!

I’ve laminated these boards and popped them in a binder for my Kido’s to practice over and over again. For other students I print them out so they can use them as a cut and paste activities while my high level can write the answers using dry wipe markers.

These games are quick and easy to make up, simply laminate and Velcro and pop in a binder or printout for worksheets.

Matching numbers to 5 with the ladybugs

Match numbers to 5 with the caterpillar

Count and Match numbers to 5 with the bees

Ordering numbers to 5

Order numbers to 5

Find the missing number to 5

Counting to 5

Sequencing bugs

plus more games and matching pieces

Ideas for Independent Work Centres

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Activities for Math Centres

My Centres are the tables that my students rotate around to learn, practice and master skills. I’ve colour coordinated each table and in this post I’ve listed some resources I use for these Independent work areas.

Binder Games

Binder Games have become popular in my Math Center stations, they provided the extra support to students with the practice they need with new skills and working independently . I use 2 types of Binders, both are valuable resources.

  1. Binders with detachable visuals were quick and easy to make up, I laminated, added Velcro to the visuals and placed them in a binder.
  2. Printable Binders that I printed off and put in plastic sheets as a drywipe activity.

I listed what my students needed to practice in maths and came up with these skills to concentrate on and make the resources I needed. Matching numbers to 10, Count and Match numbers to10 , Ordering numbers to 10, Order numbers to 10, Find the missing number to 10, Find the missing number to 10, Counting to 10, Sequencing summer items.

At the moment we’re Practicing counting forward beginning from a given number within a sequence and adding more to find the amount. My students use a dry wipe marker at their station to access this activity and like that they can wipe off any mistakes and start again.

Matching File Folders

These games are quick and easy to make up, Print out, laminate and Velcro and pop in a file folder and you will have great number games to use over and over again.

Task Boxes

I’ve broken these type of activities down with one question to answer on each card as not to overload the learner. They enable the child to focus not only on the basic academic skills in front of them but strengthen fine motor skills, help the student develop self esteem and promote the independence of the task.

These type of activities can be easily made up from classroom resources and stored in individual boxes ready to use as a Task Box activity on any centre.

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