We love to learn through play, especially when numbers and math are involved, so it will be no surprise to hear that this penguin counting game is a huge hit with my kiddos!  I love to see them so excited about playing with numbers.

I also love activities that are easy to prep and can be used in multiple ways so I am thrilled to share this free printable number game!

DIY Felt Board Set

If you don’t have a felt board don’t worry, they are super easy to DIY.  All I did to make ours was staple a piece of blue felt to a foam board.  Just make sure you have it pulled tight around the board before you staple.

To make the pieces I used a permanent marker to draw one large and two small icebergs on stiff white felt and cut them out.  I used fabric paint to write the numbers from 1-18 (I would have kept going but ran out of paint!) on the rest of the felt and cut them out.

Download the free penguin printable: Free Penguin Printable

Cut out the penguins from the printable and hot glue to black felt.  Then cut around the penguins and you’re ready to play!

Penguin Math Activities

There are so many opportunities for learning with this felt set!

Kids can practice:

1. Counting
2. One to one correspondence
3. Patterns
4. Ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, etc)
5. Addition
6. Subtraction

Not to mention all of the fun they can have just playing pretend with the penguin scene!

 Once everything was set up my preschooler began playing by choosing numbers she knew and adding that many penguins to each of the icebergs.  After awhile she expanded that game by pretending the numbers were icebergs floating by trying to “get” that number of penguins.

Once she noticed that the penguins had different color eyes she began to sort them and then make her own patterns.  I asked her about what she was doing and prompted her to talk about which one was first in line, etc to help extend her learning a little bit.

My big kids have had fun with the penguin number set too.  My kindergartner is just starting to get into addition facts and loves to choose 2 numbers to add together and then use the penguins as manipulatives to find the answer.  We are going to be getting a lot of use out of this set!