This post shares about a recent activity I did with the three little ones. I never got it out of my drafts folder. I wanted to talk about something on my blog besides heart surgery today, so I hope you enjoy (and can maybe use) this neat idea for repurposing an egg carton while practicing math skills!

I am adding a couple of notes:

• I just used a sharpie to write random numbers 0-9 in each slot of the egg carton.

• I found that egg cartons are not all created equal. If you can find one where the egg holders go all the way up on the ends, it will work better. Hope this makes sense!

• I used pom poms because they are QUIET, which may be helpful in classrooms as well. You can certainly use other manipulatives as well!

My kids LOVED this lesson. I was so impressed with their sequencing skills, and truly there is no substitute for ENGAGING and ACTIVE learning. I can only imagine how this would have gone if I had given them a list of random numbers between 0 and 100 and asked them to sequence those numbers.

I saw this idea on the web, and I tweaked it to fit our current level. Since taking these photos, I also created some recording sheets and activities to expand the learning! The kids enjoyed working with 2-digit and 3-digit numbers again today! All you need to do to get started with this is to take an empty egg carton and put numbers randomly in each hole from 0–9 repeating a few excepting the 0. I found one 0 was plenty as it seemed to land on ours a lot for some reason!

Then you give your student 2 or 3 pom poms depending on whether they are working on 2-digit or 3-digit numbers.

This activity was harder for them. I think I may need to tweak the recording sheet. Still thinking on it, but in the meantime, they were instructed to shake the carton and write the two numbers, which the poms landed on, in two different ways. Eg: 1 and 5 can be written as 51 or 15. They loved telling me the number names once they figured out the two options.

*While the firsties worked on sequencing, our 3-year-old sorted cubes by color. I didn’t tell her to … just gave her the carton and the cubes … and she did this. Really they just want to explore and learn! Need to remind myself of this fact!*

They loved this one, but it was not something we’ve really done. I wasn’t sure how they’d do but once I explained it they did great. It gave them an opportunity to exercise their “counting by 10s” knowledge and to SHOW this concept.

Here’s a glance at the recording sheets and activities available in my 2-Digit and 3-Digit Numbers {Egg Carton Math} resource.

I have tried different give-a-ways, but the easiest for me is to just say I’ll give one copy away to the FIRST person to comment and say they’d like to try it! Oh and I moderate comments, but they have a day and time stamp so the first person to comment will get the resource! 🙂 **CONGRATS to Jennifer for commenting first. If anyone is interested in the resource, just click HERE to go to my TpT store and see the listing.**

I should add that this activity is certainly doable without my 2-Digit and 3-Digit {Egg Carton Math} resource; I just decided to make some recording sheets that we could page protect and use again and again! Try one of the above activities if you have an empty egg carton. I can almost promise your students will love this ENGAGING and ACTIVE way to practice their number knowledge!