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I don’t know what it is about construction trucks, but they have fascinated small children forever.
These larger than life machines make appearances in their pretend play, help them haul their toys around and now, they can even help them with their early math skills!
All you need are these dump truck printable ten frames and some rocks and you’ll be counting and practicing number recognition before you know it!
What Are Ten Frames?
Tens frames are a great tool to teach pre-readiness math skills such as number identification, one to one correspondence, counting and creating groups that correspond to given numbers.
They provide the perfect visual cue for those children who may have difficulty creating groups to go with certain numbers and these dump truck ten frames can be used in a variety of ways that will get children excited to learn about math.
Construction Truck Ten Frames
Dump truck ten frames come with all of the things your child would expect to see on a construction site! Each card includes a construction worker that is holding a number sign and then there’s a blank ten frame graph sitting on the back of a colorful dump truck that allows the children to place small rocks, brown buttons or even brown pom poms as they count.
Each page comes with two cards printed on them. The prep work is easy just print off, cut apart and laminate. Once that is done you are ready to fill the trucks.
How To use Construction Truck Ten Frames
After the cards are prepped and the materials are gathered you can tell the children that you will be using dump trucks to learn to count.
For those children who are just starting out give them a choice of the lower numbers (one through five) and for those children who can count groups of objects with minimal help give them the higher more challenging cards.
Allow the children to choose what they are going to fill their trucks up with and then model how to place one object in each square until they show a group that matches the number that the construction worker is holding.
For those children who have difficulty with over counting place a red dot with a dry erase marker or draw a stop sign on the box they are to stop on.
Make sure you go back and check the children’s work by having the children count the rocks, buttons, or pom-poms they placed on their cards. This can be done individually or as a group.
To make this activity even more exciting have construction vest and hard hats for the children to wear as they complete the activity.
Extending the Lesson
Once the children have learned what to do with their dump truck ten frames, you can extend the lesson by having the children park their full dump truck in the correct numeral order.
You can easily make a parking lot on the table using masking tape (I have found that this type of tape can be easily removed and does not leave marks).
Make sure each space will fit the dump truck card and have the children drive their card to the parking lot as their number is called. You can modify this for children who know how to count by having the children call out the numbers.
Once the parking lot is full have the children count the trucks.