Bottle Cap Math Activity

This bottle cap math activity doubles as a fine motor activity to develop precision, in hand manipulation skills AND counting by tens using bottle cap math!

Bottle Cap Math

First Grade Math Activity

I pulled out our stash of bottle caps, but only grabbed a couple of colors.  I wanted this activity to focus on what was IN the bottle caps vs. the color of the cap.

We used some (Amazon affiliate link) dried chickpeas and a few other dried items to fit right into the caps.  I had Big Sister count out the chickpeas into piles of 10.  We popped them right into the caps.

Big Sister counted the bottle caps in groups of tens and I added a handful of chickpeas to the side.  She then had to figure out the total number, counting the tens and the ones.

Counting out the 10 items is a great beginning math concept for first graders.  She’s counting the manipulatives with one-to-one correspondence and placing them into groups of tens.  We practiced counting by tens as we moved the bottle caps around on the paper.


I also pulled out a bag of dried black beans and she counted out groups of tens of those, too.

Big Sister counted by tens to add the caps with chick peas and the caps with black beans to get a total number of  items.  When we had 10 bottle caps of 10 items, we stacked them into a pile to make a hundreds column.


I pulled out the dried elbow macaroni and we added these lids, too.

Four tens and one ones makes 41.  She really got into this kind of math practice.

When she got tired of the math practice, we pulled out the animal figures and pretended to feed the animals.