Over The Rainbow: A Preschool Adding and Subtracting Game

Often times adding and subtracting isn’t formally taught until children reach kindergarten, but many preschoolers are very capable of basic and simple addition and subtraction concepts.  For example, give a child two cookies.  Then give one more.  The child easily understands he now has more cookies than he began.  If some cookies are taken away, it is understood that he now has less.  Over The Rainbow is a simple game that can be used to introduce basic adding and subtracting to preschoolers.

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Materials:

• dot stickers in three colors
• math counters
• dice
• game piece for each player

The object of the game is to collect as many counters as possible while each player moves his or her game piece across the rainbow.  Each colored space has specific meaning.  If the player lands on green, he adds a counter to his pile.  If the player lands on purple, the player must return one counter to the draw pile.  If the player lands on yellow, the player misses his turn.  The game continues until each player has reached the finish.  The players then count how many math counters they have collected.  The player with the most counters wins the game.

This is the perfect game to introduce the concepts that adding means to get more and subtracting means to remove.  Not to mention, add a few clover stickers and Over The Rainbow is a perfect themed math game for St. Patrick’s Day.

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Enjoy!