Candy canes and Christmas just seem to go together. Construction paper candy canes created for counting and number matching made a wonderful Christmas math activity.

Constructing the Christmas Math Game

Each candy cane counting creation was given a different number of stripes. It was a little bit of a challenge to get ten stripes on the final candy cane. I had originally thought about having JDaniel help me draw the stripes on the candy canes. After narrowing the stripes greatly to get them all on a cane, I realized it might have been really hard. I barely got the tenth stripe on the cane for this Christmas math activity.

A simple work mat created on the computer using fun and a little funky font made a great place to match the candy canes to their numeral.It was easy to place the first few numbers. As the number of stripes on the counting candy canes grew, so did the challenge. It wasn’t easy to eyeball the cane and know how many stripes it had. Counting the stripes with a pointed finger was needed.

Playing the Christmas Math Game

Having to count with a pointed finger helped me work on one-to-one correspondence. I think children sometimes jump from concrete objects representing numbers with objects children can hold and touch to abstract numerals too quickly. The stripes on these counting canes give children a semi-concrete representation of numbers.Semi-concrete representations of numbers give children something they can touch to count.  I think children young and old benefit from using concrete objects and semi-concrete representations. My students used them through third grade. JDaniel and I will probably continue to use all representations and hands-on learning for at least that long.  Maybe will use candy canes for counting in another Christmas math activity.

Here is a copy of the number page: Candy Cane Counting

Do your children use hands-on learning tools for math? What tools do they enjoy?