American Flag Counting Game

This motivating counting game is a playful way to practice numbers from 1 to 50, adding on, skip counting and early addition.

Plus, as a big bonus, kids can color it to make a patriotic American flag! When they’re done, grab our Number Formation Pack for more counting fun!

Summer is approaching quickly, and with it comes fun patriotic holidays like Memorial Day, Flag Day and the 4th of July. I was interested in sneaking a bit of learning in with our stars and stripes to help my first grader practice his skills. The American flag lends itself well to math, numbers and counting, so I created this easy 4th of July math game.

Getting Ready

The counting game is fairly low key, which made preparing for it quick and easy.

I made sure to print out some game boards and borrowed a die from one of our board games.

My first grader typically prefers to use colored pencils, so I grabbed a red and blue colored pencil but crayons or markers would work just as well.

I grabbed a package of star stickers at the grocery store and we were ready to play!

Stars and Stripes Counting Game

On his first roll of the die, my son landed on five so he added that many star stickers to his game board.

We took turns rolling the die and adding stickers to each of our boards.

Initially, we played with simple one-to-one correspondence, counting out each star as well filled our boards.

As my first grader became more familiar with the concept of the game, however, I noticed him adding in his head to determine where he would place the last sticker each round.

My son can lack confidence when working with big numbers so it was helpful to start at one and work our way up to higher two-digit numbers.

The first player to fill all 50 stars on his flag was the winner.

After the game ended, my son colored the field behind the stars blue.

Then, he used a red colored pencil, he colored the odd stripes to the right red.

Viola! His math board game had been transformed into a patriotic American flag!

Ultimately, my first grader was able to review key math concepts (counting, addition, and even/odd numbers), while playing a fun game and creating a patriotic work of art.