Sara-Jayne from Keep Up with the Jones family is back today with a DIY maths game for kids, which we are calling Out of this world maths. Sara-Jayne is mum to three boys under six and is a Junior School Teacher. This post is part of our learning with manipulatives series.

This maths craft and activity is brilliant at engaging children of all differing abilities. I’ve used it in my classroom and the children love it.

DIY maths game for kids – Out of this world maths

Equipment:

All you need are a variety of foam stickers, somewhere to stick them, and a dice. I sorted my stickers into six jars, but piles are fine! I’ve used these alien stickers because the range of aliens is pretty useful. They have differing amounts of hands, eyes, antennae, and legs.

DIY Maths Game for kids . A simple interactive, hands-on DIY maths game for kids of all ages and abilities. Maths can be out of this world with our fab game. Turn a simple kids craft in to a hands on math activity that children will love using things you already have in your home

How To Play Out of this world maths, a DIY maths game for kids:

Sort the stickers into jars 1-6 [to correspond with the dice].
The first player rolls a dice and takes a sticker from the appropriate jar.
The player adheres the sticker to their paper and begins to create their scene.

Note – I’ve played this activity with children who do not like particular colours or aliens. We decided it is not compulsory to stick a particular alien onto the paper. Instead, the player simply waits their turn for a new alien.

Once the children have ten aliens [or whatever number you’ve decided on, according to ability] they can complete their scene with other materials too, if they want.

Once the picture is completed to their liking, they are challenged to write number sentences about their picture.

Challenge your child to think of more complex mathematical sentences. They may begin with, “There are five blue aliens”. This could then lead to, “There are five blue aliens with a total of 14 legs”. This, in turn, becomes, “There are five blue aliens with a total of 14 legs – this is 3 more than the amount of legs that my pink aliens have altogether”.

Explore as many mathematical concepts as possible!

The peaceful aspect of this game [at least in my house] is that there is no winner – and using the foam stickers in conjunction with a maths activity means that the crafting time is longer than the usual “grab as many stickers as possible and stick them all over the paper” routine!

I’m joining a team of bloggers in a year-long series about learning with manipulatives. As a mum, I know that there is no better way than to learn through play and using manipulatives with kids whilst they are playing and learning means they are developing fine motor skills.

I am really looking forward to sharing and learning with you through play this series as we share creative ways to work on fine motor skills while learning.

See other ideas for using foam stickers as a tool for learning from the rest of the learning from manipulative team: