Place Value Bean Sticks and a Freebie!

Yay!  I'm so excited to share my first winter freebie!

If you read my snowflake craft post last week, you might remember that during that activity I introduced skip counting to my preschooler.  She was very enthusiastic about learning this and caught on pretty quick.  I knew she would need lots of practice to better understand this concept, so last week she made a set of place value bean sticks to help her as she practices skip counting. 

I first stumbled across place value bean sticks at Kindergarten Crayons.  If you're not familiar with this math tool, (I wasn't until a few days ago!) they are the inexpensive version of the plastic place value blocks I've used in my classroom.  Place value bean sticks are a great multisensory math manipulative that little learners can make themselves.  

Here's how my preschooler made a set of place value bean sticks...
 
Materials 
Craft Sticks
Large Lima Beans (The Dollar Store!)
Elmer's Glue 

Directions
First my preschooler spread out the glue using a paintbrush.  This method of gluing turned out to be much  easier on her fingers than squeezing the glue from the bottle!

Next she counted out ten beans.

Then she glued the beans onto a stick and repeated the process until she had 10 bean sticks.  

It was a great math activity and also lots of messy fun for my little one too!  These bean sticks will be a great tool for teaching and practicing all sorts of place value concepts such as building two digit numbers, identifying two digit numbers, regrouping, addition and subtraction!  But to start off, my preschool will use these bean sticks to practice skip counting by ten.     

Skip Counting Cards (Freebie!)
To go along with the place value bean sticks, I made a set of skip counting cards using some adorable graphics for Scrappin Doodles.

Click on the image below to download a copy or click HERE. 

Here is the activity I have set up using the place value bean sticks and skip counting cards...

My preschooler selects a card, clips it to the cup, counts out the correct number of place value bean sticks and puts them in the cup!


What activities do you do to teach your kiddos skip counting?

I link-up to these great parties!