These cute spring ten frames are a great way to help your little learner practice their numbers, fine motor skills, and one to one correspondence.
These free spring ten frame cards are preschooler tested and approved. Unlike the dinosaur ten frame printables, these do not have numbers or words to trace. I noticed my daughter’s ability to recognize numerals has outpaced her ability to reliably count to these numbers, so I decided to remove the numerals for this set of ten frame printables. This means your little learner will have to actually count the images instead of simply recognize the number.
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If you’re planning a spring theme for your homeschool preschool, be sure to grab these other free resources while you’re here on The Artisan Life:
- Spring do a dot printables
- Spring count and clip cards
- Spring counting book
- Spring matching cards
- Spring picture bingo
How to print and use ten frames
These cards are simple to prepare and an easy to use, but powerful, learning tool.
Materials needed
- Free printable ten frames (download link is lower in the post)
- Cardstock or paper
- I recommend this 32 lb paper for printables. It’s heavier than “normal” printer paper and has much better images. See a comparison of several papers and cardstocks in this post about the best paper for printables.
- Laminator and pouches or heavy duty page protectors
- Laminate the pages if you want to cut them apart into separate cards to use individually.
- If you don’t mind having the two cards still together on one sheet, you can slip the page in a heavy duty page protector. This is what we’ve done lately with ten frames and it’s worked well for us. I place all of my daughter’s current tracing and counting worksheets in a three ring binder she can grab and use anytime.
- Scissors or paper trimmer
- A heavy duty paper cutter is best for laminated cards, but I’ve used this paper trimmer for laminated pages, too.
- Small manipulatives to use as counters and tongs or tweezers, optional
- For an added fine motor challenge, have your child place the counters using large plastic tweezers or bamboo tongs.
- Do a dot markers also work for filling in frames, if they’re not laminated and you don’t plan to reuse them.
How to print and prepare St. Patrick’s Day ten frames
First, download your printables. Look for the link further down in the post – there’s an image that says “click here to download.”
Laminate the pages, if you’re using a laminator. Laminating first means you only cut once. The example page shown in this post was not laminated because lamination can make the pages more difficult to see in photos. I always laminate ten frame cards or place them in a sheet protector before using them “for real.”
Cut out the cards along the lines. You can skip this step if you prefer or are placing the ten frame cards in sheet protectors.
Use and enjoy!
How to use ten frames
Although ten frames are frequently used with kindergarteners, preschool and pre-k learners can use them to practice counting and numbers, too. (Especially with some adult help.)
My daughter enjoys filling her ten frames with manipulatives or coloring in each box with her favorite dry erase crayons. These are the spring counting manipulatives shown in the photo below. Unfortunately, they’re a bit large for these ten frames, but that doesn’t stop my daughter from using them.
What are ten frames?
Ten frames are a 5×2 grid of 10 equally sized squares.
Working with ten frames can help your child understand numbers better and truly learn how to count, not just recite numbers in order.
Ten frames can also help your child with subitizing, the ability to quickly recognize quantities without counting each one individually. (If you see two apples, you don’t think “one, two” to yourself – you just know there are two. This is subitizing.)
Ten frames are also helpful for teaching addition and subtraction. It’s easy to point at the frame and demonstrate that 6 is 4 less than 10, for example.
There are several ways to fill in a ten frame with counters. One of the most common, and easiest for young learners to master, is filling in the top row of five boxes in order before moving on to the bottom row. This page from the University of Cambridge has several helpful suggestions on ways to use a ten frame and different methods of filling one it. Here’s an example showing these St. Patrick’s ten frames:
Using these ten frame cards to improve number sense with one-to-one correspondence is easy. Have your child place a manipulative on each image on the card, then immediately cover a box in the ten frame. Covering each image as they work can help young children remember which pictures they’ve counted and which they haven’t counted yet.
Free spring theme ten frame printable download
The sweet watercolor clipart in these printables is copyright by DigitalArtsi and is used under license. Thank you, Jane, for your beautiful artwork and generous licensing.
Like all preschool printables on The Artisan Life, these are for personal and single classroom use (including use with scouts groups, therapy clients, homeschool co-ops, etc.).
You are not licensed to redistribute the digital files or printouts to other teachers/parents for use with their children or students. Instead, please refer your friends and coworkers to this page so they can download their own copies.
If you agree to these terms, click below:
I hope your little learner enjoys these ten frames! Be sure to discover these additional free printables for spring:
Free printables for spring
These free printables for spring are low-prep fun for children and adults.
This free printable spring bingo game is low-prep fun for the entire family!
This free spring word search printable is available in cute color and ink-saving black and white. Answer key is included!
Help your child practice their numbers 1-12 with these free printable spring counting clip cards.
Grab 21+ free printable coloring pages for spring.
This free spring matching game is fun for toddlers and preschoolers. Play it as a face up matching game or a face down memory game for older children.
Help your child count with confidence with this cute free printable spring counting book.
Dot marker coloring pages are always popular with toddlers and preschoolers. Use them with round stickers for a no-mess activity or cover each circle with a pompom to make the pages reusable.
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