Hands-on math activities for children who love blocks! You can use these printable counting and addition games with your favourite unit blocks to build math towers, supporting early math and fine motor skills.
Math towers – block addition activity printables
Watch this video to see how you can teach addition to your children:
Early math skills need to focus on hands-on activities, where children get to see, touch, play, and work with real things.
Later on they’ll be able to add up ‘two plus three’ abstractly in their heads, but when they’re starting out they need to see and really understand that they’re combining two real things and three real things, and ending up with five altogether.
This bright and colourful math towers game combines the fun of building towers from blocks with some counting and addition skills. Playing with blocks is also a great way to support the development of fine motor skills.
The printables encourage children to:
:: recognise digits
:: add two numbers under ten together
:: use blocks to build a tower to correspond to a given number
:: use blocks to show a two-digit addition
:: develop fine motor skills as they build their towers
Materials needed:
:: math towers counting and addition printables (see below)
:: blocks, buttons or other stackable counters
There are two versions of the Math Towers cards: one counts the numbers from one to nine, the second has a set of nine simple addition questions.
You can print on paper or card, and laminate them for extra durability if you wish.
How to play math towers
Print the math towers cards (see below) and set them out along with your blocks or counters.
Read the number or addition question on each square and build a tower on top using the right number of blocks.
For the counting version you can work in ascending or descending order, or pick a colour to complete first.
For the addition version you might like to use two sets of differently-coloured blocks, to represent the two numbers you are adding together.
Play solo or take turns with a friend to complete the whole card.
You might like to set a timer and race to complete the card as fast as you can!
For more hands-on math ideas try::: our printable number wheels
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Can’t want to use in classroom
I am thrilled beyond belief! Thank you so much for providing the FREE Math Towers printable. I teach in a small parochial school. Financial resources are limited. I look for free resources online when I need to supplement lessons. I have 2 students that are below benchmarks in Computation. I have tried many things already. Math facts are just not clicking for them. We use counters and manipulatives, but the Math Towers printable has changed everything for these 2 students! Thank you so much!
Brilliant, Amy! I’m so happy to hear this. And thank you to you for caring about your students and doing all you can to help them.
Cool
I like this method of Math towers and I will definatly use it for my daughter’s lesson.
Thanks
Great! I’m glad it’s helpful for you.
love the math method
Thanks Saymira!
Thank you! This looks great!
These look like great ideas
Thanks Sylvia. Hope you find them useful.
Thanks! Can’t wait!
Excited!
Thank you
These resources look amazing. Would be perfect to use with my year 1 class.