This activity gives students practice drawing straight lines with a ruler and looking for and categorizing shapes, for example, by the number of sides in polygons. The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation, discussion questions and ideas for extension.

This three-act math task utilizes videos and questioning to help students explore counting and joining sets through 20.

This activity gives students an opportunity to explore some of the common 3-D shapes and their names and properties. After discussion and an example, it asks students to count the required number of edges and vertices (corners) to build each of 5 given shapes. The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, ideas for extension and support, and a printable recording sheet (pdf).

This three-act math task utilizes videos and questioning to help students explore counting and patterns.

This article talks about the origins of our number system and the important roles zero plays in it. The author informs the reader that the early number systems of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans and Greeks were developed for counting but not for calculations. Not until we had a base ten number system with place value and a symbol for zero did our number system become useful.

This problem provides an opportunity for introducing and raising children's awareness of negative numbers. The first part of the problem is moving up and down a ladder or steps into a swimming pool. Students are counting along a number line, but in this case it is vertical rather than the more usual horizontal orientation. The final part of the activity encourages children to be creative and invent their own way of numbering the steps below the water level. The Teachers' Notes page offers suggestions for implementation and discussion as well as ideas for extension and support.

Early childhood, between the ages of 2-8, is an important period for developing math skills. From the first years of life, your child is learning math and developing interest in the subject through everyday routines and play. Your support for the development of math knowledge and skills will help prepare your child for future success in school and life. Check out this infographic title, Supporting Your Child in Developing Math Skills for Future Success, to learn more about how early math success opens doors for future success in college and careers.

These family and caregiver resources and activities, organized by math topics such as counting or shapes, include research-based and easy-to-follow steps to help you support your child’s math skills during a typical day.

The focus of the Ten Tens is a Hundred intervention is to help students be efficient when counting large numbers of objects. It has students bundle straws or stirrers to make groups of ten and then groups of a hundred.

This three-act math task utilizes videos and questioning to help students explore counting and patterns.

In this video segment from Cyberchase, the CyberSquad tries to reach Ms. Fileshare by using a 3 x 3 matrix to figure out the various ways they can travel to her.

This Flash-based game of chance helps children learn to move along a number line either side of a central point, as a precursor to working with negative numbers. Two players, one Plus and one Minus, take turns rolling and adding two dice, and moving forward or backward in their respective directions on the line, with the goal of reaching their end of the line first (0 or 27). The game can be played with the applet or on paper (printable pdf included). A variation involving the choice of adding or subtracting introduces strategic thinking. The Teacher' Notes page suggests strategies for introducing the game, questions to facilitate students' thinking, and a link to a simpler version of the game (Incey Wincey Spider) and a more advanced one (Tug Harder!), both cataloged separately.

In this activity students interact with rotations of a two-dimensional image. It is intended to be a bridge between the physical turning of objects and the more abstract rotations of a 2-D image. Students are asked how many quarter turns it will take to achieve a resultant image. There is an interactive Java applet available for the manipulations. The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, ideas for extension, and printable sheets.

This card game reinforces counting forward and backward within 20. It can be played by 2-6 players with six sets of cards numbered 1 to 20 (printable download included). The object of the game is to build up six stacks in the middle of the table, face up, in order from 1 at the bottom to 20 on the top. Each player in turn plays cards, according to specified rules, onto opponents' face-up piles or onto a center stack until no more plays are possible. The first player to get rid of all his/her cards is the winner. The game could also be played with ordinary playing cards.

This problem gives children an opportunity to explore patterns in a practical context and to generalize the results with a rule. Students investigate how many blocks would be needed to build an up-and-down staircase with any number of steps up. An interactivity in the hints shows the blocks transformed into a square pattern. The Teachers' Notes page offers suggestions for implementation, key discussion questions, ideas for extension and support.

This activity introduces the concept of area and offers students a way to measure it informally, by counting objects in a wallpaper pattern. Students are asked to rank irregular cutouts in order from smallest to largest. The Teachers' Notes page includes suggestions for implementation, discussion questions, ideas for extension and support, and printable sheets.

The purpose of this task is for students to explain how they know one quantity is greater or less than another quantity. Students will easily be able to identify which number is greater or less. However, explaining their reasoning will help them solidify their number sense skills.