Bottle skittles: Numbers games with young children

Click HERE to see the toy

 Early years education and care.

Benefits of using numbers and games with young children

1. Improves Cognitive Skills: Introducing numbers to young children helps them develop cognitive thinking skills. It encourages them to think about quantity, size and the relationship between numbers. Numbers games help to improve cognitive skills, such as memory, problem-solving, and concentration.

2. Enhances Problem-Solving Skills: Numbers help children understand the concept of cause and effect. This enables them to develop their problem-solving abilities.

3. Enhances Early Literacy: Numbers help children recognize patterns and symbols which are the foundation of early literacy.

4. Encourages Math Fluency: Learning numbers helps children in developing their math fluency as they learn to count, recognize and compare numbers.

5. Enhances Number Sense: Number sense is the ability to understand the relationships between numbers. Introducing numbers to children helps them understand the concept of number sense.

6. Develops Number Recognition: Number recognition helps children recognize numbers and their corresponding values. This helps them understand numbers better.

7. Develops Mathematical Thinking: Numbers games help to build early math skills by teaching children to count, recognize numbers, understand patterns, and solve problems.

8. Enhances Social Skills: Playing numbers games with other children helps to develop social skills, such as taking turns, cooperating, and communicating.

9. Builds Confidence: As children become more comfortable with numbers and math concepts, they develop greater self-confidence in their abilities.

12. Promotes Creativity and Imagination: Number games encourage children to think outside the box, helping to develop creativity and imagination.

13. Increases Engagement: Numbers games are fun and engaging, helping to keep children interested and motivated to learn.

Activity: Make a skittles game to learn about numbers using plastic bottles and a handmade ball.

Materials: plastic bottles, paint, markers, stickers etc

Instructions:

1. Set out 4-6 bottles for decoration.

2. Decide on decoration: paint, markers, wool, etc 

3. Decide on how the numbers will be attached: written on, glued, painted etc

4. Make a ball by rolling up the paper into a ball shape and holding it together with masking tape.

5. Decide the rules and how the game will be played: bingo style, keeping score on a board, straws in the bottle to win a prize

6. To add to the work on numbers: use distance/length (how far away to throw the ball - measure the ground with cm lengths), weight (how heavy the ball/skittles are), properties of materials (rolling - tin foil v tissue paper, pine cones v wood), and shapes (round v square ball for example).