Balancing Scale and Counting Bears Activities

Counting bears are a fantastic tool for teaching preschool math concepts like counting, sorting, and measurement. Using counting bears printable activities offers a hands-on way for children to engage with math, making learning feel like real life learning.

This post will explore how to teach preschool math using a balancing scale and counting bears, ensuring your preschoolers get the most out of these popular learning tools.

When teaching preschool math, it’s essential to incorporate tools and activities that are both engaging and educational.

Counting bears printable activities are perfect for this. They make learning math fun while also reinforcing key concepts like counting, sorting, and basic addition. By using hands-on materials like counting bears and simple math printables, preschoolers can build a strong foundation in math that prepares them for more advanced skills later on.

These activities also help with fine motor development and critical thinking, ensuring well-rounded learning in preschool math. It’s activities like these that are so popular in our Daily Lessons in Preschool Mathematics Curriculum.

Counting Bears Printable Math Activities

Counting bears printables are a fantastic way to introduce early learners to essential math concepts like counting, sorting, and basic addition. In these activities, preschoolers will also learn more about quantification and measurement, too!

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What’s Included

Total you get fifteen full color pages of counting bear printable math cards.

Additional Materials

Teaching Preschool Math with Balancing Scales

Using a balancing scale is a really effective way to teach basic math concepts like weight comparison and number relationships.

Preschoolers love the opportunity to use a balancing scale because it feels new and novel. The counting bears printable math activities offers for teachers to create a range of activities that can be targeted to the needs of individual students.

Counting Bears Counting Cards

The first activity looks like a basic set of counting cards where the numeral is at the top and the correlating quantity is underneath. The counting bears are organized like traditional counting cards so that your preschooler can easily see the differences in quantity on each card.

Start by having your preschooler use the plastic counting bears to count out the total on the card.

Above, my daughter is placing a counting bear on top of each one printed onto the card. This helps her refine her one to one correspondence skills, as well as develop relationships in quantity.

Quantification is an important number sense math concept that is developed during the early years, as well as cardinality of number, both of which are practiced here.

She drops each quantity into its prospective bin on the balancing scale. She draws the conclusion that more bears equal more weight. “More is always more,” she says. “And less is always less!”

Of course, this concept is only true when using same items, and for the purposes of developing number sense skills in preschool, this is an important milestone.

Number Identification and Counting Activity

Increasing in difficulty, the second activity is simply a set of numeral cards. Once your preschooler had mastered counting with one to one correspondence, she can start using these numeral cards.

Invite your preschooler to draw a card and count out the corresponding number of bears. Drop those bears into one side of the scale. Place the number card under the bin with the bears.

Draw a second card and decide if the number is more or less than the first card. The preschooler then checks her work by counting out the corresponding number of bears and dropping them into the second bin on the balancing scale. Place the second number card under the second bin.

Finally, she uses the balance scale itself to confirm which number is greater.

Concepts of greater than and less than are part of preschool math topics that should be covered during the early years.

Conservation of Number Counting Bear Activity

The final activity is the most challenging, but perfect for preschoolers (and kinders) who have mastered both their one to one correspondence skills as well as number identification skills.

The last set of counting bear cards has only the quantity printed, with no corresponding number. The bears are also place randomly on the card, so that they have to be counted.

Invite your preschooler to count the bears on the card by placing a plastic counting bear on each bear on the card. Once the counting has been done, have your preschooler identify which numeral card matches, (if you choose). Drop the bears into a bin.

Follow the same steps for the second bin. Which bin has more bears?

These cards focus on a number sense concept called conservation of number, which is the understanding that the quantity stays the same no matter the orientation. You can read more about it in our post Teaching Number Sense in Preschool.

Counting Bear Activities for Preschoolers

There are loads of activities you can do with a good set of counting bears, which is one reason why they are a staple in just about every preschool classroom. Here are some more ideas.

Get Your Counting Bears Printable Activities

Getting your printable counting bear activities is simple! Just click the cover image below, and after checkout you’ll have instant access to a variety of engaging math activities designed specifically for preschoolers.

Once downloaded, you can easily print them out at home or in your classroom and start using them right away to enhance your math lessons. These activities are perfect for adding hands-on learning to your preschool math curriculum!

Sarah Punkoney, MAT

I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.

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