Egg Carton Math

I would like to vary LM’s experience with numbers and, inspired by Numicon, I came up with this idea of recycling egg cartons:

As you can tell, omelettes have featured extensively on our family menu recently!

Well, although these are far from the nice and sleek Numicon shapes, and they certainly do have limitations, I think they can do the job of providing a mental reference for numbers. There are a few activities I am going to do with LM and, if these go well, I may splash on the real thing.

My current list of activities, starting with the most basic, are:

1.   Sequencing the “shapes” from 1 to 10 and backwards;

2.   Matching number symbols to “shapes”;

3.   Odd/even numbers;

4.   Larger/smaller numbers;

5.   Understanding two-digit numbers (place value);

6.   Exploring number bonds for different numbers, e.g. 10 can be made of 1 and 9, 2 and 8, etc;

7.   Basic arithmetic, e.g. adding one more to each “shape” to get the consecutive one, or doing subtractions by covering some of the cups.

8.   Using the "shapes" as frames and practicing counting and arythmetic with small objects (placing them in the individual cups).

I suppose, I could stretch these further. If you have more ideas, let me know!

LM's Mum