Bear Counters – we LOVE them! I am fairly certain the whole homeschool world had a set before we did, but I’m so glad we have them for our school days.
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For 5+ years, we’ve used animal counters, but they aren’t quite the same. 😉
I purchased a set of Bear Counters to accompany our Teddy Bear literature-based unit, since no manipulative is more fun during a teddy bear study! (I’ll post the details of the Teddy Bear unit soon – SO fun!)
I’ll be honest: On my least creative days (which are frequent), I fall back to us using our manipulatives in the same old way. While I enjoy boring at times, my kiddos stay much more engaged if I consistently introduce new, fun ways of using our same old things.
I have found that if I can brainstorm and do a bit of internet research, we can use our same old puzzles and manipulatives for longer periods of time without them growing stale.
To give you a little boost in your own homeschool, take a read through these ideas.
Better yet, leave your own ideas in the comments! I’m sure there are tons I have yet to think of!
Ideas for Using Bear Counters in Our Homeschool
Browse through this list of ideas and find some new-to-you ways to spice up your school day with Bear Counters!
Note that this list is particular to the Bear set that I purchased from Amazon. It contains 96 bears, containing 6 colors and 3 different sizes of bear.
The bear colors include: green, blue, red, orange, yellow, and purple.
→ Use Bear Counters as one-to-one counting practice. Have your child count to ten or twenty using one counter per number. You could also use number cards for this activity.
→ Group Bears by color
→ Group Bears by size – small, medium, large
→ Color the inside bottoms of 6 styrofoam bowls with markers, each with one of the bear colors. Have your child sort the bears by color into each bowl.
→ Play the Bears Dice Game: Place all bears in the center of the table. Each player rolls a die and takes that number of bears from the center of the table. The person with the most bears at the end of the game wins!
→ There are lots of variations to the above Dice Game:
- Use two dice and add the numbers for addition practice.
- Use one 10- or 12-sided die and one smaller die with each roll. Then subtract the difference and that is the number of bears the player can take.
- Use two dice and multiply, taking the product in bears from the middle of the table.
→ Practice skip counting using Bear Counters and a Hundreds Chart: Place a Bear on each multiple of 5 or 10 or your chosen multiple to practice.
→ Teach the concept of number bonds using Bear Counters. Download a set of Number Cards and use Bear Counters either as the whole or parts of the number.
→ Practice reading number words. Use the correct amount of bear counters to correlate to the number word.
→ Divide bears into equal groups. Write multiplication and division equations.
→ Have your child choose several bears and divide them into two groups. Write addition and subtraction equations.
→ Make up math fact stories using the bears. Here’s an example:
- The bears are at the park! 3 bears go down the slide. 2 bears swing on the swing set. How many bears are there in all?
Use the bear counters to demonstrate the story as you tell it.After you’ve demonstrated how to tell a few math fact stories, have your child tell you a few! This activity can easily be used with all four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division).
→ Practice ordinal numbers: Line up several colors and sizes of bears. Then give your child directions such as, “Find the 3rd green bear,” or “What color is the fifth bear?”.
→ Practice patterns. Create patterns with your bear counters: red-blue-red-blue and the like. Make the patterns as easy or as hard as your child enjoys!
→ Enjoy imaginative play! Find every play animal in your house and have a zoo, farm, forest, or anything else your child can dream up! If you have a dollhouse, your child can re-create Goldilocks and the Three Bears! The possibilities with imaginative play are endless!
How do you use Bear Counters in your own home? Please share your ideas in the comments!
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Marianne Flanagan
We use counting bears for patterning. I also have some printables that i downloaded. One is a school bus with a ten frame window. The kiddos roll a dice and count out bears to fill the ten frame. We also have a roll and cover bear game where they roll a cube with the six colored bears on it(you can also use a colored dice piece_ and cover the different colors until it’s full. We also have a roll and graph for the bears. It’s one of our most popular activities this fall.
Lauren Hill
Hey Marianne! I love your ideas! Thank you so much for sharing those.
Bear counters never get old. 🙂
xo, Lauren