Combining Maths and Fine Motor Skills

Another post about maths - can you tell that it is my teaching passion? I would seriously love to be a maths consultant. And this is weird because in my life as a high school student, I loved English. For those who understand this, I did 3 unit English for the HighSchoolCertificate (as well as 3 unit Japanese, but that is a story for another day).

But in my class, we are struggling with fine motor (let alone maths). And our maths time has not been much more that learning to recognise numbers, practicing writing them and playing some easy games.

Enter the pipe cleaner.

This game is another $2 gem, costing me only the $1 I paid for the stickers as I had the other components already.

So what do you need?

 A bag of pipecleaners and some long white stickers. You will also need a black marker to write on the stickers as well as some beads with a wide enough hole to slide onto the pipe cleaner - pony beads word well!

 Write your numbers onto the stickers. I did 3 different sets - numbers to 20, dot patterns to ten using the idea of a ten frame and then dot patterns to ten in a more random fashion. I did these dots to help engage the kids who can't recognise numbers.

 Fold your sticker around your pipecleaner.

 Taadaa!!! I used different coloured pipecleaners to help me be able to pull sets out for different ability groups.

The students thread the beads onto the pipecleaner based on the number or dot pattern.

As my kids progress I see more potential for this activity. You could extend it to addition by using 2 different coloured beads and writing the sum onto the flag in different colours, you could show friends of ten as well. Many mathematical possibilities all while improving fine motor.

I hope you can use these ideas in your class too!