Ice Cream Counting Mats

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Ice cream is always a hit with my kids, even if it is of the pretend kind! We love incorporating play and manipulatives into our learning as much as we can, and these ice cream counting mats were the perfect activity for working on counting scoops of “ice cream” to 12.

One of our favorite pretend activities is our ice cream shop, where my kids get to use these fun and colorful ice cream bowls and spoons that I got from Amazon. I figured we could definitely use them outside of that activity too, so I decided to add some numbered “bowls” to a math center for a counting activity.

I printed out the bowls and laminated them before cutting them apart. Then I placed the bowls on the table as well as some of the plastic ice cream bowls and spoons.

I also put pom poms inside the real bowls for pretend ice cream.

I played first with a small group of students, and we each grabbed a paper bowl and read the number on it. Then, we used the spoon to scoop out that many pom poms.

Using the spoon as the tool to pick up the pom poms is a great fine motor activity for hand control and scooping.

We put the correct number of pom poms on the counting mat or “in the bowls” to serve the ice cream!

This activity was definitely a hit. I heard more than once “I would like 12 scoops of real ice cream, teacher!”

Grab Your Set

Ready to scoop some ice cream? Grab your copy of the printable 1-12 bowls by clicking the yellow button below.
Then, hop over and grab our fun ice cream word family game, or scroll down for even more of our favorite activities!