Egg Carton Math: Make Ten!

Set aside the flashcards and make math meaningful and fun with simple household manipulatives!  To help your child practice counting and addition to 10, set up this easy ten frame game using an empty egg carton!  This is a perfect activity for preschoolers and/or Kindergartners. 

Especially during the early years, one of my mottoes is "Make Math Fun."  There's many different ways to do that, one being to make learning math hands-on!

An easy way to make an activity "hands-on" is to give the child/ student tangible manipulatives to use while learning and/or practicing a new concept.  Learning new concepts is always fun with a variety of different manipulatives; tactile learners will LOVE being able to touch, feel, and move pieces around to learn and or practice the concept at hand.

And today we are joining our "Learning with Manipulatives" blogging friends to share a fun way to make ten!

MAKE TEN MATH GAME

In this Easy Make Ten activity, your child will work out various addition problems adding up to 10 using foam blocks.

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We picked up our foam blocks for pretty cheap and have used them for all sorts of activities ranging from; 

•  Color Matching Velcro Tower 

• Word Family BINGO 

• and todays Make Ten Game!

Alternatively, you can certainly use any other manipulative you have on hand. 

HOW TO MAKE 10

What you need:

• Making 10 Worksheet {free printable available at worksheetfun.com}
• Empty Egg Carton {cut the egg carton so that there are 10 spaces}
• Two colors of  Foam Blocks
• Pencil or Number Manipulatives

Tell your child you are going to find the missing number, so that the addition sentence makes 10 using the foam blocks.  

With the Making 10 worksheet handy, read the addition problem: "2+ __=10".

Model the problem by placing two of the same colored blocks into the egg carton.  

Next ask your child "How many more do we need to make 10?"  Fill in the empty spaces in the egg carton to find the answer.

Your child can also count the empty spaces in the egg carton to find the answer.

This Make Ten "game" is great for visual and tactile learners, and I use the term "game" loosely here because there is no winner, but this activity turns a simple worksheet into hands-on fun!  

Instead of having Little Sis write the numbers in the blank, I brought out some foam number manipulatives.  This allowed us to work on number recognition as well.

If your child is not ready for adding to make 10, try a similar activity like this fun math game with foam blocks or any type of manipulative you choose!

Or work on Number Bonds with Cars! {one of my son's favorite activities}

More ways to learn with foam blocks:

• Foam Block Process Art Exploration from Life Over C’s

• Foam Blocks in Water from Still Playing School

• Roll a CVC Word Game from Mom Inspired Life

• Sticky Foam Blocks from Teach Me Mommy

• Fine Motor Precision Math Engineering Activity from Sugar Aunts

• Foam Blocks Stacking Activity from Something 2 Offer