This fun maths activity creates a bowling alley with empty plastic bottles with painted numbers. It helps to teach number recognition and counting – all important early maths skills. The rolling of the ball towards the bottle encourages hand-eye coordination.

What you need

• Ten empty plastic bottles with the numbers 1 to 10 written on them
• A small ball (such as a tennis ball or small soccer ball)

How to play

• Place the bottles in a triangular shape, ordered by number as follows:
  
           1
  
        2    3
  
    4     5    6
  
  7    8    9    10
• Ask your child to roll the ball to knock the bottles over.
• Show your child the numbers of the bottles they knocked over.
  
  Look, you knocked over number five and number eight. 
• Count how many bottles were knocked over and how many remained standing.
• The person who knocks over the most bottles wins!