There is nothing like learning in the great outdoors. The breeze in your hair, the birds tweeting, and bugs getting involved in the outdoor classroom. Learning outside with the kids is a fun twist on the everyday math homework! We love to spend time outdoors. And, I love to sneak learning activities into our play. This Math Scavenger Hunt idea was a fun way to practice second grade math concepts like adding and subtracting two digit numbers. Our math rocks made this move and learn activity extra fun.
We’ve shared quite a few outdoor learning activities on the blog before. The favorite in our back yard was this pre-reading literacy activity. We even used a few of the same hiding places for today’s math activity.
Outdoor Math Activity for Kids
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To start with, we used rocks to create math manipulatives. These pebbles were collected from a trip to our camp this past summer and painting them was a fun way to recall summer memories. You can use rocks of any size or shape for this activity. Just be sure to use acrylic paint so that the color doesn’t flake off of the rock’s surface. I love this brand of acrylic paints for it’s price! We painted both sides of the rocks in different colors. You can paint your rocks all one color or mix it up a bit. We went for the colorful approach. For the numbers, I used a paint marker. Be sure to allow the paint to dry before writing on the numbers.
When the paints have all dried, you are ready to take these math rocks outside for learning and play!
Outdoor Learning Math Ideas
We played a few different games with our math rocks.
- I hid a bunch of the rocks in a small area of our yard. I had my second grader search for two rocks at a time. When she brought them back, I asked her to add or subtract the numbers.
- We used specific numbers in a small area of the yard. I named a large number and had her find two rocks that added up to that number. (We have enough rocks that we were able to number them 0-100 using both sides of the rocks, so this worked out easily.)
- Using smaller numbers, I showed her two numbers. She had to go off and look for the missing number in a math subtraction equation.
How would you use these math rocks to play?
Looking for more outdoor learning ideas? Try some of these:
Nests Nature Hunt for Kids from Still Playing School
Outside Arrays for Multiplication Practice from Line Upon Line Learning
Sidewalk Chalk Outdoor Math Game from Look! We’re Learning!
Gardening For Math Time from Preschool Powol Packets
Tree Unit Study and Science Experiment from Schooling a Monkey
