Spring Learning Activities
- Flower Unit Study
- Spring Chromatography Science Activity
- Spring Bingo Marker Worksheets
- April Showers Number Sense Activity
- Spring Digraph Puzzles
- Spring Number Puzzles
- Spring Place Value Cards
- Spring Playdough Mats
- Garden Worksheets for Kids
- Spring Worksheets for Kids
- Spring ABC Game
Counting & Number Recognition
As kids start to learn to count, it's important that they get lots and lots of practice. It's also essential that you give them lots of visuals so they can begin to connect a picture of a quantity to the numeral.
On these puzzles, kids count the spots on the butterfly and match that to the correct numeral.
This helps kids with number recognition, one-to-one correspondence (knowing that each number counted represents exactly one object) and cardinality (how many objects are in a set).
The first set of puzzles includes the numbers 1-10, with corresponding butterfly counting pictures.
You may also like this hands on set of count & compare pages with Skittles candy!
These initial counting pictures will also begin to prepare them for addition as they see the spots as two sets of dots on each butterfly wing.
So they will see four as two and two, for instance.
Moving to Addition
Once your kids are comfortable counting and are familiar with the numbers represented by each butterfly, you can move on to the addition puzzles.
The goal of these puzzles is to move from counting to recognizing that two sets can be written as an addition sentence.
Each puzzle includes a picture with two butterflies, the total number of spots between the two and an addition sentence to model the picture.
For example, on this puzzle, one butterfly has 4 spots and the other has one spot:
The addition sentence then is 4 + 1 and the total is 5.
If your kids are 4 or 5 years old and just learning to count and add, they will likely still count each individual spot on the two butterflies. That's ok! That's developmentally appropriate, and expected.
The challenge is for them to then match the picture of two butterflies to the correct addition sentence. This may be a bit trickier for them to get, but encourage them to see each picture as two separate quantities.
So you might say, "In this picture, we see 4 spots and one spot. How would we write that using math language?"
You don't need to use formal language such as "addition" or "plus" or "sum." The goal is simply to see that there are multiple quantities and we can combine them using a '+' symbol.
More advanced kids may like this set of addition & subtraction coloring pages.
Included in the Download:
This pdf file includes 18 puzzles. First you will find puzzles to count and recognize the numbers 1-10.
Then there are 8 addition puzzles, with facts representing the numbers 3-10.
I hope you have fun exploring and counting with these fun Spring counting puzzles!
Looking for more fun, printable math ideas? Find more early math ideas from Math Geek Mama here!
Download Spring Counting & Addition Puzzles
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Bethany is the mom behind the blog, Math Geek Mama, a website dedicated to making math fun and engaging, while building a strong conceptual understanding of mathematics. When she's not playing with numbers, she is exploring with her four little ones, drinking way too much coffee, or soaking up the chaos of everyday life. Follow along on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.
