[FREE PRINTABLE] - Play Dough Ten Frame Mats

Play Dough - Ten Frame Mats

These play dough with ten frame mats gives children a fun, hands-on way to explore numbers while building hand strength and fine motor skills.

Rolling, shaping, and pressing the play dough helps develop hand muscles, coordination, and control, skills that are important for writing, drawing, and daily tasks.

At the same time, filling the ten frames and forming numbers supports number recognition, counting, and one-to-one correspondence.

What Is a Ten Frame?

A ten frame is a simple, two-row, five-column grid used in early math education to help children visualize numbers up to ten, develop number sense, and understand concepts like counting, addition, subtraction, and place value.

It provides a visual model for making 10 and seeing how numbers are composed of tens and ones, building foundational skills for higher math.

Even if you don't use these printouts for play dough, they're great for using counters and exploring the creation and decomposition of numbers, i.e. 5 can be made up of 1 and 4 or 2 and 3.

Play Dough Ten Frame Mats

Recommended age: 3 years and up.

Activity: Use play dough to create numbers and represent quantities using ten frames.

Purpose: To support early number recognition, counting skills, one-to-one correspondence, and fine motor development.

Click here to download our Play Dough Ten Frame Mats

If you want to introduce this type of activity to a child who prefers to move, rather than work with their hands, check out Learning Resources 10 Frame Floor Mat Activity Set.