Both of my boys spend a lot of time playing, exploring, and reading about numbers, using a variety of materials. So I decided to put together this Reggio-inspired math tray for them. It uses natural materials and materials from different board games. That means you could easily recreate this tray just by looking in and around your house.
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To make this math tray, I used:
- Sea shells
- Rocks
- Pinecones
- Playing cards (remove jacks, queens, and kings)
- Dice
- DIY jumbo dice
- Mini plastic magnetic numbers
- Wooden number tiles from a sudoku board game
K was mostly interested in the playing cards and spent his time matching cards to the numbers on the sudoku tiles.
Four year old J has been obsessed with numbers for years. He is particularly into adding and subtracting complex math sentences. So J liked to roll the dice and create addition problems using the number displayed on the dice. He would also find the matching numbers using the different loose parts. And it's also a good thing our magnetic number set has an equals sign!
He told me the answer right away, but went back and counted the dots on the dice to double check his answer. Yup, still equals 15!
J also rolled the dice and used the shells, rocks, and pine cones to represent his answer.
But J really doesn't need loose parts to calculate his answers. He is gifted when it comes to math. Here is an example of what he did with the parts in this math tray. No counting involved.
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