Learn with Play at Home: Number Writing Activity. Salt Tray Game.

This quick and easy to set up activity uses a few basic materials and is fabulous for practicing number writing, counting, subitising and more. It can be a great independent activity that promotes self checking and self correction.

Ages: 3+

(Maddie was 4 here. See the bottom for Handy Tips to simplify or extend to meet your child's needs)

Materials: Table Salt, Dish, Cardboard squares, marker, paintbrush

On one side of each card, write a number and on the other side draw the corresponding amount of dots.

The invitation to play

The child counts (or subitises where possible) the amount of dots on the card. They then write the number in the salt. Flip the card to see if you got it right. If not, shake your salt tray a little and then copy the number correctly.

For Maddie I did numbers up to 30. As the numbers got larger it was harder for her to subitise them (automatically recognising the amount shown without counting), but we worked on seeing them in chunks. She noticed that the 9 was 3 rows of 3 dots. It was then also easy to automatically see 6 dots and 3 more.

She loved attempting the numbers and then flipping the card to see if she got it right.

The self correction aspect meant that this would be a great independent activity and perfect for a literacy station in schools.

Capturing pride through accomplishment. All children need the opportunity to experience success and to feel proud of their achievements. Activities such as these allow for children to practice and self correct until they succeed.

Always time for some free play as well.

Using the end of the paintbrush was great for a pen but it's also fun to write with your fingers.

Maddie made up her own little game of find the number. The paintbrush is perfect as a little palaeontologist tool.

Rather than number writing you could focus on counting and one-to-one correspondence as shown above.

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by providing numbers 1-3 to begin with and then slowly expanding on the numbers. Try out some of the ideas directly above. Rather than number writing, focus on counting and corresponding amounts to the dots shown.

- Extend this activity by:

Focusing on teen numbers or higher.
Having the children make the number cards themselves
Mixing up the number cards and having children order them from smallest to largest or largest to smallest.
Playing "Which comes next?" or "What comes before?" where whichever number is chosen from the pile, the objective is to write the number that comes before or after that number. You can make varying number cards to suit this specifically if you like.

- Mix it up by doing the activity the other way around. Have the written number side up and encourage children to recognise the number and draw in the corresponding amount of dots.

- Here are some of our other activities that help us practice number writing.
Click the following pictures to take you to the activities.