Sorting Number Magnets: Preschool Math Activity

Little M. has been having trouble recognizing larger single digit numbers. I thought we would take an opportunity to do this fun easy preschool sorting activity with letter magnets! The cool thing about this is that the magnets stick to the muffin tin, so no matter how she tilted the tin, the magnets stayed put! I used a muffin tin for 6 jumbo muffins, so we sorted 6 numbers (4-9). If you wanted to use all of the numbers, you could simply use a larger muffin tin.

What You Will Need

• a large muffin tin
• a few number magnets for each number (different sizes and styles are great to reinforce recognition of different fonts!)
• container to initially hold the magnets

Teaching Your Child Number Recognition with This Activity

Place all of the numbers that you would like to sort in a container (nice and jumbled up!) Place one magnet in each muffin cup so that your child can see where the numbers should go. (Alternatively, you could write each number on a muffin liner.) Take turns choosing magnets with your child, and placing it in the correct spot.

When you pick up a number model out loud how to do the activity. (You could say something like, “I found number six. Where are the other sixes? Here they are!” and place the number in the correct group).

Our number magnet set seemed to use the same mold for the numbers six and nine, so it was a toss up where to place them. We talked about this and had fun turning the sixes upside down to make nines and vice versa. 

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this activity, please share and leave a comment! How do you teach number recognition to your preschooler? If you need more math ideas for preschoolers check out Counting Beads or Counting Buttons