6 Ways to Have Hands-On Fun with Math

Many kids need to use hands-on ways of learning in order to understand abstract math concepts. Use these fun ideas to engage your kids with math! They’ll be having so much fun, they won’t even realize they’re learning.

Engage Your Younger Kids – Hands-on Math with Counting

Your youngest learners will love practicing number recognition and counting with these cute Counting Caterpillars. All you need is construction paper, glue, and pom-poms. Help your child count the correct number of pom-poms while you help them glue them onto the caterpillar body. Another fun variation on this hands-on learning activity is to use the pompoms to practice sorting colors. Your older kids can even get in on the fun with using this idea for practicing addition.

You can keep little hands busy plus practice counting with Number Bead Stringing. With a few craft supplies, your kids can practice their fine motor skills and have fun with hands-on math. You can adjust the use of this beading activity depending on the math skills your child needs to learn or practice. Younger kids can, of course, mainly practice counting. Older kids can analyze and organize numbers from least to greatest. Then, take it a step further and work on addition equations with your older kids.

Here’s all you need to string number beads:

• pipe cleaners
• beads
• masking tape
• markers
• white board and marker

Maybe your kids would like to create their very own Craft Stick Puzzle. And even better, they can mail it to a friend to share in the fun! Create a bunch of these puzzles for a couple hours of hands-on math fun.

You can probably make your own Craft Stick Puzzles with materials you have around the house.

The recycled materials list includes:

• craft sticks
• Mod Podge
• photos
• paintbrush
• markers
• scissors
• ruler
• pencil

Engage Your Older Kids – Hands-On Math Concepts

If you want to engage your kinesthetic learners plus enjoy some hands-on math fun, then you’ll love Indoor Skip-Count Hopscotch! All you need is painters tape and permanent markers to make this hopscotch game. Your older kids can practice their multiplication tables plus burn some energy, especially if it’s too cold to head outside.

Did you realize you can use a hands-on math activity to visualize something as abstract as statistics? Take a look at this Mesmerizing Mathematics activity. Your kids will create their own bell curve by randomly dropping beads onto a specialized board they create using this printable from KiwiCo.

Here’s all you need to create your own bell curve activity:

• printable from KiwiCo
• corkboard
• glue
• pins
• craft sticks
• straw
• scissors
• foam tape
• 1/4″ round beads

Finally, help your kids understand the concepts of greater than and less than with these fun Gator Puppets. All you need are egg cartons and paint and you’ll have your gator teeth ready to chomp down on some numbers. Using some sticker dots, your kids can show number values on some paper. Then, the Greater Than and Less Than Gator will keep his mouth open to gobble up the largest number. Your kinesthetic learners will absolutely love this hands-on math activity. It’s so much more engaging than a boring worksheet!

More Hands-On Math Resources

If you love these ideas, then you’ll love these other hands-on math resources below. They’ll help you break out of the worksheet box and explore math concepts in a fun way.

• Hands-on Ways to Sharpen Math Skills
• How to Supplement Lessons with Hands-on Learning 
• M&Ms Math
• How to Teach Math to the Child That Hates Math