To help our Full Day Kindergarten students visually recognize the numbers 1 to 1o, as well as count to 10, I drew a game on poster paper. In the top left corner, I put a picture of a frog. In the bottom right corner, I put a picture of a lilypad. I then drew lines of blocks that led the frog to the lily pad for the “spaces”.
To use this game board, I created cards with the numbers 1 to 10 on them. For the game pieces, you can use anything, but I used our sorting bears. I had 4 children sit around the table. Each of them chose what colour of bear was theirs. I then shuffled the cards and the children took turns picking the top one off the pile. They needed to recognize the number to know how many spaces they could move their bear. We didn’t have a “winner”. The game was finished once each player got their game piece to the lilypad.
For children who are having difficulty recognizing their numbers, I put dots for the corresponding number on the cards. If the child could not visually recognize the number, he/she could count the dots to know what the number was. I also prepared cards with higher numbers so that when I play with children who already know the numbers 1 to 10, I could have some larger numbers for them to recognize and count to.