Number Writing Practice along with Spielgaben Hands-on Activities

With most skills, kids needs lots of practice. Spielgaben has a new math workbook series to add extension activities for anyone who owns the complete Spielgaben set. I want to show some ideas for combining the workbook series with hands-on work using the Spielgaben materials. Today, I’m focusing on number writing … something that takes lots of practice to develop the best possible handwriting skills.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Spielgaben. All opinions are honest and my own.

Complete Spielgaben Set, Version 4

In case you’re not familiar with Spielgaben toys, they are exceptionally high-quality educational toys designed for ages 3-12. You can see from the photo that the cabinet is very high quality and fits in well in a room with traditional Montessori materials. I love the easily removable drawers in version 4.

The Spielgaben complete set comes with over 700 pages of full-color printed learning materials. These printed materials help you as a parent or teacher easily use Spielgaben toys educationally with your child and/or students.

Note: The yarn balls in set 1 are fine for babies and toddlers. The other sets should only be used with ages 3 and older unless your toddler no longer mouths objects or you are constantly supervising your toddler during an activity using the materials.

Spielgaben Math Workbook Series

If you own a complete Spielgaben Set, you can now order an optional extension resource: a set of math workbooks for Preschool/Kindergarten through Grade 6. These don’t have as many direct hands-on activities as the original printed learning materials (or digital materials if you have an earlier Spielgaben set). Some of the activities are hands-on, but this is a workbook series with mainly paper and pencil work illustrated with Spielgaben materials. Year 3 on up has answer pages in the back.

You can use the math workbooks in a homeschool however you prefer. You could work straight through them after using the original hands-on lessons, combine workbook activities with hands-on lessons from the original printed materials, or skip around, using the workbooks as needed to reinforce work from the hands-on materials. I like to skip around and review lessons from the original printed materials at the same time as I use a workbook page.

Spielgaben Materials Used in This Post

For this post, I used parts from Spielgaben cabinet drawers 3-6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. With younger children, I like to set up a tray or basket with the parts needed for a particular activity (as a control of error). For kindergarteners on up, I just have the child bring the drawers needed for the activities to the work area.

You could use some of the early pages from the Math Workbook Year P or Year 1 to review number formation. The pages also focus on counting, although most children using the workbook series will be very comfortable counting objects. Many children will find the activity very simple, but it’s an easy way to observe a child’s pencil grip and number formation skills. I used one page from the math workbook to review proper number formation along with the following four pages that come with the complete Spielgaben set.

I used the original Spielgaben Workbook Year K, pages 42-45. I like these pages because they aren’t just about counting and writing numbers. (You can have the child write the numbers in addition to drawing lines in the two pages that connect the dots.) I especially appreciate the spatial awareness they help the child develop. The ability to see 3-dimensional shapes from the 2-dimensional shapes on paper is a very helpful skill to have!

Number Writing and Cube Work with Spielgaben Materials

Note: My 5-year-old granddaughter, Zoey, is sitting at our dining room table because of the small Spielgaben parts. I added a cushion to one of the dining room chairs for extra height, and Zoey often takes activities with small parts to this table to protect her toddler sister and cousin.

Zoey has done lots of Montessori hands-on math work along with Spielgaben hands-on math activities. She can write all her numerals, understands place value, and knows addition and subtraction facts.

I just chose one page in the preschool/kindergarten book as a review of proper number formation. Zoey completed the written part, and then I let her make whatever designs she wanted to from the page, using Spielgaben parts. Here Zoey’s recreating one of the chicks shown on the page. She loves Spielgaben materials, so she really enjoyed this.

Then we reviewed hands-on activities from the Spielgaben Workbook, Year K. Instead of just drawing lines connecting the dots, you can have your child write the correct number on each line as number writing practice.

This was another great spatial awareness activity, identifying the number of cubes from each view.

This is also great for spatial awareness and number writing practice. For a child who’s working on counting skills, these activities are wonderful for those as well.

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All My Spielgaben Posts

Many of these include links to free printables! (Click on an image to go to the related blog post. The gallery is ordered according to publication date with my latest post at the top.)

Version 4 of Spielgaben Educational Toys 

I highly recommend Spielgaben as an amazing educational material for home or school. Even though the toys aren’t inexpensive, they’re definitely worth the price because of the high quality of materials and number of years your children or students can use them.

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