Pumpkin Bowling: A Fun Way To Practice Counting, Adding and Subtracting

I've posted before about the differences between playbased preschool programs and academic preschool programs. In our very first issue of the Someday School newsletter, I explained that a completely playbased preschool program would not do any direct teaching of academics at all. We are a little different, because we do introduce some academics, but we do them in fun ways that feel like play.

Pumpkin Bowling is a prime example of this. I made bowling pins by filling empty pop bottles with rice. I bought a small pumpkin to use as a ball. A pumpkin, by the way, does not make an ideal ball, because it is not really round. It is, however, fun to roll. If we had used a ball, a little bit of the novelty would have been lost. Plus, since this was right before Halloween, it fit with the season. We can continue pumpkin bowling for a while, because it also fits with autumn and Thanksgiving. Eventually, though, our pumpkin will probably go bad. But anyways...

What I DID do was set up the bowling pins in the traditional ten-pin arrangement at the end of our hallway, and set the little pumpkin on the floor near by.

What I did NOT do was say something like, "Okay, children, today we are going to do pumpkin bowling. Everyone line up. Here's how we play." In fact, I didn't say a single word about the pumpkin bowling game. I just left it there for the children to discover on their own when they headed down the hall. They instinctively knew what to do and started playing. They used "rock paper scissors" to decide who would go first. 

Once they had started playing, then I could casually introduce questions like, "Wow, how many did you knock over?" This prompted the children to count their pins each time. They chose to play by taking an infinite number of turns, and counting pins after each turn, until they had knocked every pin over. They eventually discovered that, once all of the pins were down, they did not even have to count them because there would always be ten. 

Mmmm... learning..... 

After a while I would ask, "And how many are still standing?" I would make comments like, "So, four down, and six up!" 

What I will probably do in the future, but didn't do today because I didn't think of it in time, was incorporate our magnetic ten frame to "keep score." We could use the magnets to represent bowling pins that were knocked down. Or you could use the blue ones to represent "up" pins and the green ones to represent "down" pins. This would continue to help children learn the concept of different numbers adding up to ten. There will be different numbers of "up" pins and "down" pins, but they will all add up to ten. 

For kids who are starting to learn about subtraction, you could count all of the pins before knocking them down, then count the ones that fall and the ones that are left over, commenting, "So, ten, minus four down, equals six up?" 

Some teachers in Agile Learning Centers or playbased preschools would not make any of this commentary, choosing instead to let the kids discover all of it. With preschoolers especially, though, I like to do some modeling, in a casual and playful way. I do not make them count the pins or lecture them on addition facts... and if they spin off with a different way to play, I let it happen. 

This is such a fun and simple game to put together, and a really great way to learn some math concepts! What other math games do you like that keep kids happy and engaged?