Learning With Pop-its for Preschool, Pre-K & Kindergarten

Learning with pop-its can add one more way to learn through play in your classroom! I found out about Pop-its from an Instagram post. They looked like so much fun to play with, so I set out immediately to find a way to add them into my math and literacy centers. I did a quick Amazon search, and found more than I thought I would!. Consequently, with a little creativity, and I came up with 6 games!

Literacy and Learning with Pop-its

Learning letters is the foundation for literacy in the Pre-K classroom. As you can imagine, I was thrilled to find the small pop-it squares with uppercase letters and symbols you see pictured above. Of course I can use them for letter recognition with uppercase letter cards. However, with lowercase letter cards, I can use them to teach upper to lowercase letter matching too. As you can see, the small size makes them perfect to use for small group centers. I decided to buy 4 of them and print out 4 sets of cards. I love the fact that, this game can be used for independent play, as well as with teacher guidance. Of course I can’t wait to use them with my Pre-kindergarten class the first week of school fo ra letter review and informal assessment.

Math With Pop-its

Just like the small pop-its with letters, they made numbers too! Naturally I had to come up with more games to play with pop-its in our math centers! As you can see in the picture above, the pop-it pads with numbers go all the way up to 30. Since I teach Preschool and Pre-Kindergarten, numbers greater than 20 can become confusing and more abstract. At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to use them in my classroom. But then I thought I could say “look for the number that is a 2 next to a 6” and so on. The natural thing to do at that point is to tell them the name of that number. If it sticks…great! If not…it’s just more review of numbers 0-9!

The small pop-its also include shapes. With that in mind, I made some shape cards to match the shapes on the pop-it. As a result, now I have 2 games to play and a great way to review shapes in math centers.

I also chose a jumbo pop-it pad. My great idea with these are for my students to partner up, each taking one side of the pop-it pad. I made 2 separate sets of cards for these partner pop-it games. One set has numbers 0-20 in coordinating colors with the pad. If a student draws a card with a green 3, they “pop” 3 green bubbles. the partner can either do the same or draw a different card, like a purple 11 and “pop” 11 purple bubbles, and so on. This will reinforce both numeral recognition and counting.

Another set of cards I made for the Partner pop-it games have dots in coordinating colors with the pop-it pad. The students will count the dots, and as they did with the number cards, they will count and “pop” that many bubbles.

Great Activities for Anytime of the Year

I can’t wait to play these games with my class the first week of school, and bring them out anytime I need a fun center that is packed with learning. I know my class is going to love them. Click here for the game cards!