With the wide range of learners we have in our classrooms, one of the easiest ways to differentiate & accommodate is to incorporate a variety of ways for kids to demonstrate their understanding.
Worksheets are the easiest and most relied upon (us busy teachers love a good no-prep page amiright?!), and hands-on center activities are great for extra practice and peer interaction, but it’s CRAFTIVITIES that always seem to be a fav with my firsties!
So I figured I’d share 11 of my favourite NO PREP or low prep math crafts that I use frequently for extra practice and even ASSESSMENT at the end of a unit…plus they all double (or triple I guess 😜) as super easy and eye-catching bulletin board displdays!
Our first unit at the beginning of every school year is patterning. We create Patternpillars at some point during our unit, first with beads as a center activity, and then with the template above.
We usually complete this second patterning craft at the end of the unit. I love that students who are ready to take their learning to the next level have the freedom to come up with more complex colour patterns and really demonstrate their deep understanding of repeating patterns.
This seemingly-simple craft packs in LOADS of learning for your geometry unit. The craft pictured above uses the pre-labelled shapes (great for little learners) but you can also test student knowledge by having kids label each shape themselves using the blank templates provided. Afterwards, students arrange the shapes according to their number of sides (starting at the cone from the highest number of sides to the least)…saving that mini rectangle for last just for the cherry on top 😉
When you’re ready to move on to 3D geometry, this is a great attention-grabbing introductory activity. Students can get creative as they create their own Juice Box Monster using whatever materials you chose to provide…keep it simple or get crazy and whip out the glitter! Either way, YOU’LL love that your students will gain practical experience with a common 3D shape & the vocabulary that will be used throughout the unit, and THEY’LL love that they get to take a juice box home! 🧃
There’s something about MINI crafts that kids go nuts over. This one plays right into that obsession. Students get to design and create their own tiny home using two 3D shape NETS. Great for applying practical knowledge, building fine motor skills, and boosting creativity!
On to addition and subtraction! First up: ADDITION. This is a great introductory craft for students to show what they already know about writing basic addition facts. This one is quite open-ended with lots of options, making it great to accommodate a wide range of abilities.
In the example above, students choose (or you determine) a total sum in which the rest of the fish will add up to. In this case, all 3 addition sentences add up to 10 (as indicated on the brown fish). However, you could also simply have students write and solve any addition facts that they (or you) chose on their fish.
Subtraction can be a tricky one to assess beyond a concrete answer on a page. The following two subtraction crafts provide a visual that clearly demonstrates a child’s understanding of this concept. For Crunch Crunch Subtraction, kids can glue actual real-life fish crackers (*cue excitement*) on their page AND crush them, too!! Talk about FUN.
This second craft applies subtraction to a real-life scenario to further solidify understanding. I love that this one basically shows all parts of a subtraction sentence in one beautiful visual story. The particular story starts with 7 caterpillars in total but 4 will be transforming, so they are represented as cocoons. Finally, the answer to the subtraction problem is demonstrated as 4 butterflies flying away. The entire process is not only shown in pictures, but written as a word problem below. LOVE IT!
I’ve always found Cuckoo clocks to be fascinated and just so pretty. So each year we learn a bit about them and create our own during our telling time unit! It’s a little tricky to tell from this photo, but it’s actually a 3D cuckoo clock since the little doors open to reveal a bird popping out of the clock! This adds a fun element while students practice labelling all the parts of their clock from the numbers and hands, to the vocabulary used to tell time.
Probability can be an abstract and somewhat difficult concept for little learners to grasp. So I find that having the opportunity to get creative and visualize a probability scenario helps tremendously with student confidence and understanding. For this craft, kids can use whatever gemstones they want (in this case I had each type of gemstone already printed on a different colour of paper, but you can print a selection on white and have students color them in themselves). Then, they glue them in their treasure chest and fill in the blanks on the “blurb” page to show their understanding.
Financial Literacy is pretty easy to make hands-on because kids get to use (play) MONEY! 💵🪙👛 It’s a favourite unit every year in our classroom and nothing can make it more fun…except getting to create your own ice cream Sundae or cone! This is another craft that’s packed full of options for students to choose their own elements. They get to be creative, and I love that it’s an easy assessment because they have to add up all of their elements to find their grand total! (This craft feature US, Canadian, AND generic coins)
Love them all? SAVE BIG with the growing bundle! I have even more math crafts on the way so stay tuned for graphing, place value, measurement, and more telling time crafts.
For now, here’s some images you can PIN 📌 to save for later!
