Free Printable Cupcake Counting Grids for Preschool

Do you like cupcakes? I honestly don’t and my daughter only eats the frosting, but she loves Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes. In fact, she loves EVERY Pete the Cat book. I’ve been combining her love for Pete the Cat and his many adventures with some fun learning games like these free printable cupcake counting grids for preschool math. Shiloh loves counting the cupcakes (and the buttons on our fun button counting grids)! I love that she is learning to count while she feels like she is playing.

Materials Needed for the Cupcake Counting Grid Game

Paper | Laminator | Laminating Pouches | Differentiated Instruction Cube

Tape (optional) | Glitter Pom Poms

Pete the Cat and the Missing CupcakesPocket Foam BlocksGlitter Sparkle Pom Poms

To Prepare the Cupcake Counting Grid Game: Print the file found below. Laminate the counting grids and the large cube inserts if you choose to use those. To use the printable cube, simply cut on the outside line and fold on the inner lines to form a cube. Tape the edges to hold the cube together. If you choose to use the larger cube inserts, cut apart the dice cards and place them inside the windows of the differentiated instruction cube.

Please note- there are two sets of cube inserts and cubes included. One has the numbers 1-3 twice and the other has the numbers 1-6. I recommend using the 1-3 cube with the counting to 10 game as it will make the game last longer. For the counting to 20 grid, you could use either cube.

How To Use the Cupcake Counting Grid Game: Roll the cube and place that number of pom poms on the cupcakes on the grid. Let your child decide where to place them. There is no right or wrong way to use the grid.

We’ve had fun using the dice alone and counting the cupcakes and also using the ten-frame by itself to practice counting all the way to 10.

Right now we are working on reinforcing one-to-one correspondence, so I am having Shiloh touch each leaf in the ten-frame and on the dice as she counts them. Otherwise she gets a little ahead of herself and starts counting with ‘2’ instead of ‘1’!

Ways you can use the Cupcake Counting Grid Game:

One-to-one correspondence- teaches the child that each cupcake is “1”.

Addition- all of the numbers rolled “add” up to the total number (you can also use 2 dice and add the numbers together on each turn.

Subtraction- start with the counting grid full of cupcakes. With each roll “subtract” that number of cupcakes from the grid.

Have you seen all of the different Pete The Cat books?