March 9, 2013

Gross Motor Activity to Practice Skip Counting


Instead of sitting at a desk doing worksheets, I like to set up opportunities for my boys to learn through play with gross motor activities.  Children are multisensory learners, and when movement is combined with learning children are more likely to retain the information learned.


Early this week the forecast was calling for rain, so I set up an indoor gross motor activity for my boys.  We do our best to stay active even when we are stuck inside.  One of our favorite gross motor activities from last year was our bean bag Shape Toss, Hop, Skip and Jump game.  This gross motor activity took me less than ten minutes to set up, and we played with the shapes for weeks.


Since the shape toss was so much fun I decided to plan another game using craft tape on the tile.  I outlined the tile squares in different colors and formed numbers with black tape inside.  I decided to use the game to practice skip counting.  I have to be honest and tell you that it took me a good hour to set up this gross motor activity.  If we weren't expecting rain it would have been much quicker to set this up outside using sidewalk chalk


Instructions for Play:
JZ (5) threw a bean bag to a numbered square.


Then he hopped on each number until he reached the bean bag.



He counted by fives as he hopped.


JZ and I took turns throwing the bean bag and hopping while counting.



As much as the set up took a lot of time, in the end it was worth it.  All four of my boys have been hopping around on the numbers all week, and JZ is a pro at counting by fives now.  This really was the perfect way to stay active during all of this rain.




Made it too 100, whoo hoo!




Partway through playing JZ said he needed to do something.  He grabbed the craft tape and made a 100 on the front door.



For more ideas for getting kids moving visit my Active Learning board on Pinterest. 

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Other ideas for indoor educational gross motor activities:

9 comments:

  1. What a fantastic idea! I think skip counting by 5's is the "fun" skip counting number too! I love your hop board.

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  2. Dear sir
    please send as some more Activity, so that we can improve our school activities
    pranit salunke

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  3. ple send more activity

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  4. My son would totally love doing this, and I think it might be the main way he could learn how to skip count! Thanks for this idea!

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  5. This is an excellent idea!! I saw it first on Pinterest this week and re pinned it, but I did want you to know I appreciate your creativity with teaching boys ;-) Anything large motor learning is great!!

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  6. What fun! We do this sometimes with sidewalk chalk. I like your idea indoors :-)

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  7. As a kindergarten teacher I LOVE this!!!!! What a great idea for all the children with so much extra energy! Thanks for sharing.

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  8. I love when kids get excited about learning. This is a god idea!
    Brooke
    Tales from a Fourth Grade MathNut

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  9. I love this I am going to do this for my preschool class not only for numbers but letters, colors, and shapes as well.

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