Math Play: Egg Carton Number Toss

We are excited to be participating in Tinkerlab’s Egg Carton Challenge this week! The goal of the Creative Challenge was to create something using an egg carton that is child-centered/child-directed. My son loves games, especially ones that involve throwing or bowling. For the last creative challenge (with paper bags), we created our own Paper Bag Angry Birds game.

This time he decided he wanted to do something with our leftover Easter candy and throwing… so we came up with this egg carton number toss game.

Materials Needed for Number Toss Game:

• egg carton
• scissors
• tape
• colored paper or colored tape (we used colored electrical tape)
• sharpie
• leftover candy
• large piece of drawing paper

Directions for Creating Number Toss Game:

1. Cut the egg carton into twelve little pieces.
2. Tape egg carton pieces to large drawing paper.
3. Write two sets of numbers 1-12 on colorful pieces of tape and stick them onto the candy and one into the carton “cups”.
4. Start playing the game!

How to Play this Number Game:

• Pick up one piece of candy
• Identify the number on the candy (my son said the number aloud)
• Try and throw or drop the candy into the egg carton without knocking it over (this part is tricky, but fun!)
• Grab another candy and toss it and keep going until all the sections of the egg container are filled!
• Dump them out and start all over again!

Not only did this game help us practice number recognition, matching, and work on hand-eye coordination skills, it also was a fun and active way to get use out of ALL the Easter candy we have lying around our house!

Do you have an older child?  Have them toss answer math questions by tossing the candy into the correct answer (ex: 15+19=???  or what is 12 divided by 3???).  This game is easy to adapt to a wide range of ages.  Like this math game?  Check out our other early math activities.

Do you have any other fun ways that you re-use candy at your house?

What else have you made from an egg carton?