Rainbow Tally Marks

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As I was walking through Dollar Tree the other ay, I saw these colorful popsicle sticks and thought they were perfect for a rainbow project! So today I’m sharing Rainbow Tally Marks practice to help build number sense.

These rainbow tally marks are a great, hands-on way to practice counting by 5’s, counting on and working on fine motor a bit as well! Rainbows always make me happy and are great to use all year long, or during your weather unit, St. Patrick’s Day or spring in general.

Getting ready

You’ll need colorful popsicle sticks (we found them at Dollar Tree) or you could use regular popsicle sicks too if you can’t find the colorful ones. You’ll also need to download, print and cut out the rainbow number cards that you can find at the bottom of this post.

Counting Tally Marks

To play, have your student choose a rainbow number card. They can then use the colorful popsicle sticks to create that number as tally marks. Once they have created the number correctly, they can choose another number to make.

These work great during small groups so you can be sitting there to help make sure their count is correct but can easily be used as a math center ask well. You could even send them home with the kiddos that need a little extra practice.

We used plastic photo boxes to keep the sticks and rainbow number cards all together so they can easily be stored. The kids can easily grab the boxes during center or small group time and start working.