Number games

I'd like to show you some (4) number games E. likes playing any time, any place. These activities cover number recognition, counting, colour matching and fine motor skills as well up to number 10. A little bit of skip counting is also involved.

1. Counting Caterpillar

As we are great fan of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar, when I found this Counting Caterpillar Busy Bag I was more than delighted. The printable is free.

I've changed the pom-poms into small coloured stones. The reason for this change was I found the pom-poms too slippery on the laminated sheets.

So what I did:

• I printed the caterpillars from the site above

First, she put the cards in order from 1 to 10

• I laminated the cards
• I prepared the colourful stones in a little bowl 

Then she started to put the little stones on the body of the caterpillars. She paid close attention to the right colours. Pinching up the little stones really helps the hand muscles to strengthen

She was saying the numbers out loud while placing the counters

Sometimes she asked me to do it in turns.

I'll put on the last one.

2. Apple counting

This activity is a part of the fruit unit among the various great free printables from Welcome to Mommyhood. (You can find the printables at the bottom of the blog post and the apple tree activity is on page 12. This printable is also free of charge)

3. Ice-cream counting fun

With the summertime here we just couldn't avoid some ice-cream activities this summer either.

The FREE printable of this Ice-cream counting activity can be found on one of my favourite educational resource pages: The Measured Mom.

Just go to the page above and print the ice-cream and number cards (laminate them for durability - optional) and the counting can begin.

Counting the candies on the ice-cream

placing the right number on the cone

You can finish this activity with licking some ice-cream.

4. Count the coloured sticks


Colours have always been E.'s favourite. So we started matching colours quite early, when she was 13-14 months old. This activity involves colour sorting and counting as well. A year ago I made these coloured paper rolls for sorting colourful objects.

First, I put number 1, 2, 3 and 4 in front of each paper rolls and E. needed to put the exact number of coloured sticks in the right place. Then came the idea of skip counting:

If you liked these games, check out my earlier posts about numbers:

•  Bottle top calculator

• Watermelon seeds counting, number memory game, building a wall of numbers

If you still want some more, have a look at my 123-number games collection on pinterest.