This week is fire safety week so if you’ve been talking about this with your kids here’s a counting on activity with a fire safety theme you might like to use!
Counting on
The most important learning focus of this game is to encourage children to count on (and off). For example, after their first turn their counter will no longer be on START. So if they spin a 2 and their counter is on the 5th space (the fire truck) they need to count out loud ‘6, 7.’ They will then reach the match and have to go back down 2 spaces, so they should count out loud ‘6, 5.’
Research has shown that this kind of counting on procedure results in literally twice as much learning and sense of numbers than merely counting 1, 2, 3 over and over.
Look at the Research
- For a closer look at how to (simply and easily) make your kids’ board games more effective for learning check out this research-based post.
- Dr Elida Laski talks about the most essential addition strategies for kids on this post or you can listen to it on iTunes.
Getting organised
- Click on the following link to download your Fire Safety Counting On Board Game. It will immediately be sent to your downloads folder or other device equivalent.
- Print it off, attach a brad to the spinner and grab a couple of counters.
How to play
- Put counters on START
- One child spins the spinner and moves that number of places. After landing on the space they look for the arrow pointing up or down and move their counter again in that direction, the correct number of spaces.
- IT IS VERY IMPORTANT to encourage our kids to COUNT ON rather than saying 1, 2, 3 over and over – that is of little use unless the children are at the very early stages of learning to count.
- They then take it in turns spinning, counting on and then moving up or down the board according to the arrows and numbers.
- The winner can be the child who reaches 10 first, or have no winner and the game finishes when all kids reach 10.
Fire Safety
Although this board game has a fire safety theme it doesn’t actually have a specific learning component. However, you might like to talk to your children about the different aspects of fire safety represented by the graphics. Also, how in an emergency you may find yourself moving forwards and backwards on your way to escape the fire due to the different variables you may face.
More free counting on activities?
- Super quick counting on to 100 spinners
- A roundup of free and DIY counting board games from various bloggers.
- Skip counting beach puzzles and veggie puzzles.
