Animal Math Manipulatives | Making Groups of 5 or 10
Math manipulatives help learners visualize math concepts by moving around the objects. Really anything can be used as a math manipulative. Animals are one of our favorite objects to add to math games. Today I share an easy grouping activity for preschool or elementary. Use the animals to practice making groups of 5 or 10. Affiliate links are included in this post.
Using Animals as Math Manipulatives
I introduced the idea of grouping to my 5 year old with our Fishy Math Practice inspired by Swimmy. We placed the fish into different sized schools. For today’s activity, I thought we would work on only groups of 5 and 10. We have a lot of Safari Ltd animals – some of them were sent to us by Safari Ltd, but most of them I’ve purchased over the years for stocking stuffers and Easter baskets. The Safari Ltd Coral Reef TOOB Set
Making Groups of 5 or 10
For this activity, you’ll need:
- lots of animals (or other objects to use as math counters)
- one die
- a circle with 5 on one side and 10 on the other (you could also use a coin)
I set out a bowl with our animals. We happen to have 60 something which is perfect for this activity. The goal is to place the animals in groups of 5 or 10 (based on the flip of the circle). Roll the die to see how many groups you’ll make.
Roll a 2. Flip a 5. Make 2 groups of 5. How many animals do you have total?
Roll a 1. Flip a 10. Make 1 group of 10.
You can take this opportunity to talk about how 2 groups of 5 is the same as 1 group of 10.
Continue playing as long as you like. Instead of using a die, you could just call out the number of groups. This is helpful if there are certain numbers you want to work on,
Barnyard Math Games
We’ve used the farm animals in the past for some fun barnyard math games. We practiced number recognition, counting, addition, and even some reading skills by using a white board, milk caps, and animals.
More Math Manipulatives
This post is part of a series hosted by School Time Snippets. All month long you’ll find great ideas for math manipulatives using items you already have at home.
More Math Games
- Go on a number walk to practice writing numbers.
- Try these math games inspired by the Avengers. (sponsored post)
- Our Truffula tree math games inspired by the Lorax are ever popular.
- See all of our math ideas here.
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