Counting and Patterning with Play Dough, Spaghetti and Beads

Set up a fun playful maths activity using spaghetti stuck into play dough and a box of colourful threading beads! Fantastic for developing fine motor skills, practising counting, recognising numerals and making simple patterns in a hands-on, open-ended way.

Welcome to another week of Playful Maths, hosted here on The Imagination Tree and with Learn with Play at Home. This series focuses on fun, active ways to learn about maths concepts with young children, using everyday materials from around the home. This week we have been looking at great ways to use play dough as a tool for learning maths!

Based on one of our previous invitations to play (a photo series shared daily over on my Facebook page) I set out balls of home-made play dough with dry spaghetti skewers stuck into them. Next to this was a box full of coloured wooden threading beads in a range of sizes and shapes and some numeral cards (made very simply by writing onto squares of card.) I started off a repeating pattern onto one of the spaghetti skewers, then asked what they thought they could do with the materials. They were very excited to start threading beads, make  their own patterns and count out numbers to match cards!I gave C more challenging numeral cards to match, including some teen numbers that are more tricky to recognise. She counted out the beads one at a time, using 1:1 correspondence, and checked often that she had got the right final amount. They both asked for lots more and completed them, sticking the cards right into the dough to make a little collection.
We talked about making repeat patterns with two then three colours, then started some with various numbers of repetition, e.g. 1 red, 2 purple, 1 blue etc. After copying and completing a few, C was able to make up some of her own and encouraged Pop to try and copy them.

Extend this activity:

Provide simple pattern cards to copy by drawing repeating colours on cards

Ask children to make their own patterns then draw them onto card for others to use

Using two spaghetti skewers, add together small amounts on each one to find a total number

Put 20 beads onto a skewer and then roll a dice to find a small amount to subtract, counting them off one by one to find the new total

What they are learning as they play:

Physical development: fine motor pincer grasp, steady hand control, threading

Maths: counting using 1:1 correspondence, recognising numerals up to 20, counting up to 20 objects reliably, matching and creating simple repeat patterns

Cakie: 4.7

Pop: 3.1

Bean: 14 mos

Search the Playful Maths ideas collection here!

Check out the fabulous flower play dough learning mats from Learn with Play at Home!

Follow our Playful Maths series on our Pinterest board with the same name!