Valentine Math Fact Sensory Center

Need a last minute Valentine activity for the week?

I have a few kids that need to practice their fine motor skills this year, so lately I've been really interested in trying to incorporate more sensory activities into our day.  This sensory center cost me $4 to make and 30 minutes to put together!  I found all of the supplies at Dollar Tree. 

You need: 

1 egg carton

1 bag of Valentine table scatter

1 bag of Valentine Pompoms

1 bag of red basket filler ( a little goes a lonngg way!) 

1 bag of 100 foam hearts (mine were stickers. I separated the small and large ones, saved them for another craft, and just used the medium sized hearts. I stuck two together so the kids wouldn't peel the backs apart, but if you just had regular foam hearts it would save some time!)  

Mix the table scatter, Pompoms, and basket filler together. I mixed mine in a gallon bag so I could just pour it into a bin when I got to school. 

It ended up making a nice mix of soft, slippery, and scratchy textures.

Cut the top off the egg carton and number the cups 1-12 (or any other sums you need your kiddos to practice) 

Write facts on the plain foam hearts. Again, you can differentiate for the needs of your students! We are working on understanding the difference between plus and minus signs, as well as fluency in facts under 10, so that's what I focused on. You could also do all teen numbers, draw shapes and sort by the number of sides, or simply do a sort and count by color or size of the hearts. It really just depends. 

Mix the facts into your "base." 

Students pull out the hearts and put them in the cup that equals the fact.  I plan to have mine use tweezers to sort through the bin and find the fact hearts.

And that's it!  How else could you differentiate this idea in your class?