Math Activities and Games for Easter
Springtime Counting Ideas with Jelly Beans, Bunnies, Colored Eggs
Feb 13, 2009
Easter is fast approaching and the kids will be looking forward to the warm spring season and a visit from their favorite bunny. The time is ripe for parents and teachers to come up with a few clever Easter related math activities and sharpen those logic and computation skills.
Jars Full of Jelly Beans
Teaching size comparison, volume, and area can be colorful and more exciting than ever using jelly beans. Get several different sized jars and fill each with the popular Easter candy. Then have a contest to see who can come the closest to guessing how many are in each jar. This game can be one that goes for a week or more.
Have children earn multiple guesses by doing chores (at home) or maintaining good behavior (at school). Better yet, have students complete simple math worksheets. Every problem that they get right earns them a guess!
Multiplying Easter Eggs
It’s never too soon to teach simple multiplication concepts and counting by ones, twos, fives, and tens. Collect several colored plastic Easter eggs. Place one counter (jelly bean or coin) in each yellow one, two counters in each green one, five counters in each pink one, and ten counters in each purple one. Then hide the eggs and send the preschoolers on an Easter egg hunt to find them.
Once found, the children can then open the eggs and count their treats! Help them to separate the eggs into colors and teach how to correctly count by multiples, starting with the largest amount first.
Egg and Bunny Bowling
Purchase small white paper or Styrofoam cups and several plastic Easter eggs at the department store. Have the children decorate the cups so that they look like bunnies. Glue paper bunny ears to the cups and draw bunny eyes, noses, and mouths. Provide an example to help out with the craft project, if necessary.
Stack up ten bunny cups in a pyramid by placing four on the bottom, then three on top of the four cups, then two, and then finally one cup on top. Have children take turns throwing three eggs at the pyramid stack. Then help them count how many bunnies they were able to knock down. Some advanced preschoolers can be asked to make an equation using addition to keep track of their scores.
Easter Baskets of Fun
Fill a big Easter basket with colored plastic eggs. Try to have at least four colors for this math graphing game. Blindfold the children and have them come up individually to pick eggs. Provide a collection bag/basket for each child. Make sure that they get at least eight or ten eggs apiece. Then have them fill out a chart to see how many of each color they get. Graph worksheets can be created in advance.
Easter Egg Toss
Attach Velcro or sticky paper in a crisscross pattern around the diameter of some plastic Easter eggs. Make a dartboard with a large piece of fuzzy felt glued to cardboard and use glitter in spring colors to mark the circles and score amounts. Play darts by having children throw their eggs at the dartboard and count up their points. For preschoolers, make the point amounts smaller and have them play until they reach five.
Getting kids to do their math will be simple this springtime by using resourcefulness and a few Easter items. Parents and teachers can celebrate spring and the Easter holiday while multiplying their children’s understanding and enjoyment of math.
See Fun Math Activities for Preschoolers for more math ideas that are appropriate any time of the year. For great math board games, check out Best Educational Math Games for Kids. Learn about the latest math puzzle craze by reading KENKEN is the Ultimate Math Puzzle Challenge.
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