Dinosaur Addition Stories [free download]

Are you looking for a FUN way to practice counting and addition? We’ve got your back! This activity is super easy and only requires a couple of materials.

Materials Needed:

Dinosaur Addition Mats (FREE download at the bottom of this page!)
Dice (one or two depending on your child’s academic needs.)
Small dinosaur toys (if you don’t have any, you can use small blocks, legos, rocks, cereal, etc. and pretend they are dinosaurs!)

Directions:

Download and print out our Dinosaur story mats. You can use these for future math lessons, too!
Gather the dice and dinosaurs.
Tell your child that you are going to play a game with the dinosaurs today! You will get to take turns telling stories with the dinosaurs.
Let your child roll the die. Start telling the story based off the number rolled. For example: “Two dinosaurs were flying in the sky.”
Have your child pull out two dinosaurs and put them in the sky (make sure they count each dinosaur one at a time.)
Roll the die again and tell another story based off of the number rolled. “Three dinosaurs were walking on the ground.”
Have your kiddo add three dinosaurs to the grassy area of the mat.
Ask: “How many dinosaurs are there in all?”
Let your child count each dinosaur as they add the two piles together and count them one-by-one.
Take all of the dinosaurs off of the mat and do it again and again!

Easy, right? And SO.MUCH.FUN!

You can tell multiple stories and play this game over and over again.
If your child is needing more of a push, use two dice so that they are counting and adding higher numbers.
If your child is struggling to count to five, skip the die and just call out numbers while telling your story. Focus on counting up to three. Once they master that, then you can count up to five.

We do this activity in our classrooms and it’s always a hit! I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Love,

-Miss Toni