Snowflake Themed Math Activities

Even if you don’t live somewhere that gets a lot of snow, adding snowflakes to your classroom themes can be a lot of fun. They’re a great way to learn about symmetry, patterns and just to use in math learning.

For example, you can practice math facts up to 10 with these free printables from Math Geek Mama. They include addition and subtraction facts and kids color in all the snowflakes with problems that have the same solution (for example every problem where the answer is 5).

Work on multiplication facts and break the code with this activity from Royal Baloo. The download comes with questions that are answered by decoding multiplication problems where the answers stand for different letters. You could use the same code to write your own secret messages, too.

HoJo’s Teaching Adventures has a snowflake puzzle activity that includes addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. You can get it when you give your email address. You know where to put the puzzle pieces because the math sentence on one piece matches the answer on the other.

Graph out the number of each different kind of snowflake with this snowflake I-spy graphing activity from Schooltime Snippets. Kids can mark each snowflake as they count them with a dot marker, or color them in with different colors of crayons.

Symmetry is an important aspect of snowflakes, and kids can play with shapes of different numbers of sides to make their own symmetrical snowflake patterns. This activity from A Little Pinch of Perfect has printable tanagram shapes kids can use to make a snowflake on a template, then count up the number of each shape they used.

Here’s another project using pattern block shapes to make snowflakes from Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls.

This one is maybe more art than math, but you can also have kids complete the snowflake with different geometric shapes with this activity from As Told By Mom.

Snowflake Suduko Game

With little kids especially, linking learning to physical activity really does help them learn. Movement can help kids focus, and it just keeps them from sitting still all day, which isn’t good for anyone.

The good news is lots of different learning activities can be adopted to get kids moving while they learn, so let’s look at some math and number activities that use gross motor skills.

Probably the most obvious thing would be hopscotch, which helps kids count while they hop. You can also mix up the numbers, do skip counting with the numbers, give kids a simple math problem and have them hop to the correct answer, and on and on.

This number hop game from Gift of Curiosity is a more chaotic version, with number flash cards on the floor that kids can hop, skip or jump to as you call them out (this one is more for individual number identification than counting). It’s a great indoor option if it’s too hot, cold or rainy out to do traditional hopscotch, too.

This painter’s tape number line idea from Days with Grey doesn’t involve quite as much movement, but kids can move around while they place things on the number line and work on learning about one to one correspondence. In the blog post they use shoes, but you can count anything you’ve got handy. (Be warned when I visited this website had an ad that continually took up the whole page, but you can get the idea pretty quickly.)

One of the important tasks of learning numbers is learning a parent’s phone number just in case it’s ever needed, or how to dial 911 in case on an emergency. Teaching Mama has a great way to practice telephone numbers and get some movement in with a giant telephone keypad made out of paper plates. You can also use this for counting practice, but it’s a great idea for learning phone numbers, too.

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