Foam Cup Construction with a Die
After E had played our Foam Cup Construction with Numbers game for a while, I tried to find a way of adding more interest to it. We’ve started incorporating dice into our activities, so we used one to extend the game:Â Foam Cup Construction with a Die.
(E was 3.75 years old.)
This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.
For Foam Cup Construction with a Die, you’ll need:
- Foam cups {plastic cups work as well}.
- Sharpies, stickers or just a pen to write numbers on the cups.
- A die.
As E isn’t completely comfortable with dice yet, I decided to just use one die in this game and make several sets of cups with numbers 1 through 6 on them. The game can easily be extended using two or even more dice.
I explained that we were going to use the die to tell us which cup to use next, and E got right to work.
First off, she separated all the cups and set them out on the floor for quick access to all the numbers.
She rolled the die a few times and picked out the corresponding cups to put together.
After the first few times, she decided to turn the die rolling into a full-on gross motor activity, getting on all fours and tossing the die across the room 🙂
I noticed that she didn’t have to count the dots for numbers 1 – 3 {this skill is called subitizing} but didn’t always know the correct number just from looking at numbers 4 – 6. She counted the dots for the higher numbers to be sure she got them right.
 Her special way of rolling the die led to a few accidents
but they didn’t discourage her, just gave her even more reason to start over again and again 🙂
When she didn’t have any cups left that corresponded to the number she’d rolled, she simply rolled again.
She didn’t like the fact that there were a few cups left over when the “wall” was finished, so I adjusted the number of cups slightly to make sure she could use them all.
Do you play with foam (or plastic) cups? What’s your favorite way to play with numbers? Leave a comment!
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Are you looking for more simple math games? Check out these!
Match This! Matching Games for Toddlers
Contact Paper Fall Tree Counting Game
Watermelon Roll and Count Game by Life Over Cs
Simple Addition Game by Hands On As We Grow
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