Activities at Home

Number Search

Let your child do the searching while you do the cutting. And, if numbers to 100 present too great a challenge, go up to only 50.

What You Need:

  • Newspapers and/or magazines
  • Marker
  • Scissors
  • Several sheets of paper taped together
  • Glue stick or tape

What You and Your Child Will Do:

  1. Have your child look carefully at a page of the newspaper for the numbers 1 and 100 (and any numbers that come in between). Let him or her use the marker to draw a big circle around each number found.
  2. The search can continue for a few days, with your child looking on other newspaper pages to find more of the numbers between 1 and 100.
  3. Meanwhile, cut out the numbers your child circled and place the cutouts together on the table.
  4. Take a break and ask your child to suggest a way in which the cutout numbers could be arranged. The child may say, “…all the numbers up to 10 on a page, all the 20s on another page, all the 30s together,” and so on. Numbers arranged this way may look like this:
    pieces of paper with number groups 1-10, and 11-20
    Alternatively, the child may suggest putting all the numbers with “1” in them together, all those with “2” in them together, and so on. Beware: This way, some numbers will belong in more than one place! For example:
    pieces of paper with number groups containing ones, and number groups containing twos
  5. After helping your child to do the sorting, have him or her read the numbers and then write them, in order. Together, decide which of the in-between numbers are missing.
  6. Continue with the search, looking for the missing numbers. Then glue or tape the numbers to the paper in whatever way your child suggests.

More to Do:

It is unlikely that all the numbers from 1 to 100 will be found, even in several searching sessions. So, you may wish to suggest that you or the child write in the missing in-between numbers.