Building Towers

Age group
  • Early Years (Age 3 to 6)

Curriculum Goal

Kindergarten: Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviour

Demonstrate an understanding of numbers, using concrete materials to explore and investigate counting, quantity, and number relationships (#15).

Context

Children can play in pairs or one-on-one with an educator.

Materials
  • Game board (Appendix A)
  • Number cards, dot cards, or word cards (Appendix B) or dice
  • 80 unifix cubes total – 40 cubes of the same colour for each player

Lesson

  • Players take turns drawing a number/dot/word card (Appendix B) from a shuffled pile (or rolling the dice), building a tower using that many unifix cubes, and placing it on the corresponding number on the game board (Appendix A).
  • The game ends when each player has had 5 turns or all 10 cards have been drawn from the deck.
  • Then each player stacks all of their towers to make one big tower.
  • Children can compare to see whose tower is taller and by how much.

Look Fors

Can the child identify…

  • How many unifix cubes tall is the tower?
  • How many more unifix cubes does your tower need to be the same height as the other player’s tower?
  • How many unifix cubes does your tower need to get rid of to be the same height as the other player’s tower?
Share this: