Best suited for: Early & First Level / Age 0-4, 5-7
Maths involved: number recognition, addition
Materials needed:
10 empty toilet rolls*
3 or more sheets of white A4 paper
1 or more sheet of white A4 card
A pencil
A pair of scissors
Glue
A black marker pen
A coloured marker pen (we used red)
A pink pen, pencil or crayon (optional)
A circular object ca. 6cm in diameter to draw around, e.g. the lid of a jam jar
* If you want to avoid using toilet rolls, you can also use other cardboard tubes – e.g. empty kitchen rolls - cut to 10cm in length.
Instructions
This fun activity with a maths twist has two phases: first you make the game, then you play the game. We picked polar bears, as they are fairly easy to make with white paper and card, but if you have coloured paper and card to hand you could also experiment with making different kinds of animals – or why not make a whole zoo!
Step 1: Cover the toilet rolls in white paper. You should be able to cover four rolls with each sheet of A4 paper, but if not then you may need more than three sheets.
Step 2: With the coloured marker, write the numbers 1 to 10 on to the front of the covered rolls.
Step 3: On your white piece of card, draw around your jam jar lid (or other circular object) ten times and cut them out. Hold on to the scraps! Depending on the size of your lid and how closely you line up the circles, you may need a second piece of card.
Step 4: With the black marker, draw a polar bear face on to each circle of card.
Step 5: Out of the scraps of card left over from cutting out the circles, cut out ten pairs of ears. Glue the ears on to the polar bear heads.
Step 6: Then use the pink pen to add some colour to the ears (this bit is optional, you can leave the ears white if you want).
Step 7: Finally, glue the heads on to the top ends of the toilet rolls.
Your polar bear bowling set is now complete!
To play the game, line up the polar bears in a bowling pin formation (one in the first row, two in the second row, three in the third row and four in the fourth).
Find a small ball to roll and bowl over the pins. Add together the pins you have knocked over.
To celebrate Book Week Scotland, we are delighted to announce the finalists and winners of our Maths Tales 2025 story-writing competition, run in partnership with Read Write Count with The First Minister.
We are delighted to also announce the winners of our Finn's Wild Maths Adventure Contest! Well done to everyone who entered, we really enjoyed going through all the different creative submissions.
