Activity for ages 4 to 6.

What will reach the top first?!

This summer themed math game will have your kids counting, graphing, and comparing.  It’s perfect to play outside on a warm summer day or to add some summer inside your classroom at a math station.

Scroll down and grab your graphing freebie, then hop over and grab our free Beach Writing Prompts for even more summer fun.

Getting Ready

To prepare for this game, I first printed the game board on white cardstock for durability and laminated it for use again and again.

Then I grabbed a pencil and paper clip to use as a spinner on the game board.

I also grabbed a bucket of pom-poms to use as my marking pieces on the graph and some plastic tweezers that are always great for working on fine motor skills.

That’s it!  We were ready for some Summer Spin and Graph fun!

Summer Spin and Graph

To play, I showed my students how to put the point of their pencil in the center of the spinner and then flick the paper clip with their finger to make it spin.

The first student spun the spinner and landed on the beach ball.

Using the tweezers, she picked a pom-pom and placed it on the graph above the beach ball.

Students continued spinning and graphing until one of the summer pictures reached the top of the graph first.

Then my students happily cleared the pom-poms off of their board started the game again!

Extension Ideas

There are so many opportunities for students to talk about math while doing this activity!

We worked on:

• Counting the number of pom-poms above each summer picture
• Comparing the number of each summer picture using the words greater than, less than, and equal (for example, “I have a great number of pom-poms for the shell than the sandcastle.”)
• Counting to tell how many more were needed to reach the top of the graph
• Determining if each number was odd or even

Grab Your Download

Ready for some Summer Spin and Graph fun?!  Just click the blue button below to grab your FREE download and then hop over and snag our Beach Time Subtraction for even more beach time fun!