Quick Math Warm-Up with the Twenty Dot Play Mats
If you’ve downloaded Math Kit Bundle 2, you already have access to one of our most versatile new resources—Twenty Dot Play Mats!These mats were designed to support number fluency and counting to 20—but their potential goes far beyond basic number work. Today, we’re sharing a simple warm-up activity that’s more about visual recall, attention, and memory-building than counting—and it's a perfect way to get the most from these mats.
Whether you're working on math skills, brain warm-ups, or group games, this activity adds value and flexibility to your math block.
Focus + Memory Mat Game
What You’ll Need:
- One plain Twenty Dot Play Mat per student
- A set of colored counters that match the dot mat colors
- Your colored Twenty Dot Mats for display
How to Play:
- Show students one of the colored dot mats for a few seconds.
- Ask them to spot where a specific color (e.g. orange) appears in each row.
- Hide the mat.
- Students use colored counters to recreate the orange positions on their plain mat.
- Flash a new card and repeat!
Game Variations:
- Time it: Only allow 3–5 seconds to look before hiding the mat.
- Double color: Ask students to place two colors instead of one.
- Sequence strategy: Give each dot a number (left to right: 1–4), and ask students to remember the “code” (e.g. orange is at 3-1-2-4-1).
- Line by line: Only recreate one or two rows at a time for focus and scaffolding.
🧩 Tips for Using the Dot Mats:
- Laminate for durability and dry-erase marker fun!
- Use with math counters, linking cubes, teddies, or any manipulatives.
- Mix plain and colored versions to adapt to different goals.
- Keep a stack ready for centers, transitions, or brain breaks.
- Think beyond numbers: these mats are great for patterns, memory, logic, and matching.
🧠TL;DR — 7 Quick Points:
- If you own Math Kit Bundle 2, you already have this!
- Students use plain mats + counters to match colors from a flashed card.
- Students look, remember, and recreate colored dot positions.
- Practice visual recall, not just counting.
- Use any manipulative: counters, cubes, bears, markers.
- Vary it: memory time, colors, rows, strategies.
- Laminate and reuse forever.
Follow along with our Math Kit blog series here:
👉 https://frompond.blogspot.com/search/label/Math%20Kit