Dot BOWLS?

Soooo...I'm NOT a "dot plate" expert.  In fact, I had never heard of dot plates until last year.  I always meant to make a set of them, but a lot happened last year and I never got around to it.  This year...I'm really trying to stay of top of things so I was heading to make my dot plates and got to looking under my cabinet for my plates and, well, I had no plates.  BUT, I had bowls...and "dot bowls" were born.  Okay, I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to make dot bowls, but it's a totally new idea to me!  :)

First you will need the sturdy paper bowls.  You could use styrofoam bowls possible with stickers...maybe...not sure how well that would stick.  But, these dotters were super fast!!

I used the skinny bingo dotters you can sometimes find at Dollar Tree to make the dots.  The ones from Dollar Tree make smaller dots so these were perfect for the small area of the bowls.

I made 2 sets.  You will see that one set is black.  For the next set, I used colored dotters so students could hopefully distinguish between the colors and recognize that 2 and 1 is 3, 3 and 1 is 4 and so on.

 As you can see in the picture below, students will use these bowls to create sets that match the set in the bowl.  Of course, you can use any manipulative.  Seasonal erasers would change it up a bit and this can be a "forever" center!  I heart forever centers because it requires little to no maintenance.  DING!  :)

Here are the rest of my bowls...

Ooops!  This picture is sideways so tilt your head to the left.

Students can simply throw objects in the bowl, stack them and make towers, or match the dots 1:1.

I hope you find this helpful, easy, and FUN!  

I would love to read your thoughts below!!  :)