As part of the 21 Challenge I posted an activity which at its core was focused on Early Numeracy Fun For Preschoolers.
This Duplo dice game I played with our preschooler last week is also focused on early numeracy, in particular:
- counting – recite numbers in order
- one to one matching – while being able to recite numbers is a skill preschoolers can learn by rote, one to one matching means that they count out items correctly. This takes time and practice and there are so many real life opportunities you can use to help them practice counting out, eg two biscuits for each child.
Materials needed for Duplo dice game:
- Duplo blocks. We played with 29 pieces, but you could play with fewer or more blocks if you wished.
- 1 dice
How to play Duplo dice game:
Spread out Duplo blocks.
Let the preschooler roll the dice. Have him count the dots on the side facing up, by pointing to each dot and saying the correct number.
The preschooler can then take as many blocks as he rolled. Have him count the blocks out one by one and stack them on top of each other.
Take turns rolling the dice and stacking the blocks. Along the way take the time to compare the size of the towers. Talk about the towers being equal, smaller than, bigger than etc.
You can get them to point to the taller tower. You can even ask them how much bigger is this tower than the other in simple scenarios like the one photographed above.
The winner is the one who has the tallest tower once all the blocks have been used.
The preschooler enjoyed the game and we played it many times in a row. It is a great quick game to start building the foundations of numeracy for your preschooler.
Does your preschooler have a favourite numeracy based game?