Play "Build Your Own Pizza"

Number recognition is an important skill for kindergarteners, but sometimes, mastering it and learning what these symbols mean can be overwhelming for your little one. If that's the case, try playing "Build Your Own Pizza." Here's a fun game for your child where she uses her number knowledge to put the right ingredients on her paper pizza to win. With this game, mastering number recognition will be as easy as pizza pie!

What You Need:

• Construction paper in a variety of colors
• Scissors
• Glue
• Markers
• Laminator or clear contact paper
• Dice

What You Do:

1. Cut out 9” circles from brown construction paper to make the crust of the pizza. Make enough circles so that each child playing can participate at one time.
2. Cut out five different types of pizza toppings, 2” to 3” in size, enough for the number of pizza crusts you made. For example, you might want to make cheese, tomato, pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, and so on.
3. Draw six squares on a 9” x 12” sheet of white construction paper. At the top of each square, write the numbers 1 through 6 and draw the dots from 1 to 6 (like a dice face).
4. In squares 1 through 5, draw or glue on one of the construction paper ingredients under the number. For instance, 1 might be pepperoni; 2, cheese; 3, tomato; 4, mushrooms, and 5, onions. Underneath the number 6 write, “Take off one item.”
5. Laminate the pieces or cover them with contact paper to keep the pieces durable.
6. Give each child a pizza crust and one piece of each different topping.
7. Encourage the children to take turns rolling the dice and putting the toppings on according to the number on the die. For example, if a child rolls a five, he would add to his pizza the ingredient listed on the chart squares for the number 5. If the child rolls a 6, he would take one item off.
8. Continue to play until everyone makes a complete pizza. How long you play depends on if you want one or all of the children to finish.

Author Note: I have used this game with children from the ages of three to five. Everyone loves it. At first you will need a a parent or teacher to introduce the game and help the children learn, but after that the children will play the game with very little adult help.