The Tin Game — Label How Many Are Hiding

Small objects are hidden in lidded containers and the child puts a paper label on each lid so that anyone can tell how many are inside without opening it.

  1. Gather 4 identical opaque containers with lids (tins, yogurt pots, or cups with saucers on top) and about 15 small objects — buttons, dry pasta, or bricks.
  2. With the child watching, put a different number of objects in each tin — for example 1, 2, 3, and none. Close the lids and shuffle the tins around.
  3. Ask: “Which one has three in it?” Let the child guess, open, and discover that guessing is hard.
  4. Hand over sticky notes and a pencil: “Can you put something on the lids so we will know next time?” Accept whatever they invent — dots, drawings of the objects, sticks, or numerals. Do not correct it.
  5. Shuffle again and let the child use their own labels to find “the one with two,” “the one with nothing,” and so on.
  6. On another day, swap roles — you write numeral labels (start with 1–5, later up to 10) and the child fills each tin with the matching amount, then you check together by tipping them out and counting.

Variation: play “one more” — secretly add one object to a tin while the child watches, and ask what has to happen to the label now.

Requirements

  • Space: A table top or a patch of floor
  • Surface: Table or floor; a tray keeps small objects from rolling away
  • Materials: 4–6 identical lidded tins, pots, or cups; 15–30 small identical objects; sticky notes or paper scraps and tape; pencil
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child
  • Supervision: Moderate — adult runs the hiding and shuffling; close supervision if small objects are used around younger siblings

Rationale & Objective

This is a home version of the “tins game” Martin Hughes used in his research on how children come to understand written number. The closed lid creates a real reason for a symbol: the objects cannot be seen, so something on paper must stand for the hidden quantity. Hughes found that preschoolers readily invent workable notations — pictures, tallies, dots — and that these self-made symbols help them grasp what conventional numerals are for. Reversing the roles practises the skill named in this subdomain’s measurements, matching numerals 1–10 to quantities, which appears in Teaching Strategies GOLD (Objective 20c, connects numerals with their quantities), Head Start ELOF (P-MATH 5), and Montessori’s cards-and-counters work. Labeling the empty tin gently introduces the idea that even “nothing” can have a symbol.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: decorates the labels without any link to the amount, or cannot use the labels to find a tin after shuffling; matches numerals to quantities only for 1 and 2
  • Developing: invents labels that copy the amount (three dots, three drawn buttons) and uses them to find the right tin; fills tins correctly for numerals up to about 5 with recounting
  • Proficient: uses numerals or tidy tallies as labels; reads the labels back confidently; matches numerals 1–10 to the correct quantity most of the time and checks by counting
  • Advanced: finds a way to label the empty tin; updates a label after “one more” or “one less” without recounting everything; explains why numerals are quicker than drawing every object

Safety Notes

  • Buttons, beads, dry beans, and coins are choking hazards — keep them away from children under 3 and count them back into the bag at the end
  • Check tin edges and lids for sharp rims; plastic pots or paper cups are a safer choice
  • Resist correcting reversed or invented numerals during the game — reversals are normal at 5 and correction turns a thinking game into a handwriting test
  • If the child shows no interest in numerals and cannot match any numeral to a quantity by the end of the kindergarten year, raise it with the teacher rather than drilling at home

Hints

  • Playfulness: make it a pirate’s treasure store or a squirrel’s nut stash. The “none” tin is the trick tin — children love catching an adult who picks the empty one
  • Sustain interest: change the contents (raisins to eat afterwards, toy animals, coins), add a fifth and sixth tin, or let the child hide and label for a sibling or grandparent to solve
  • Common mistake: showing the child the “right” way to label before they have tried. The learning is in discovering that their own mark works — numerals can be offered later as a faster trick
  • Limited space: use egg-carton cups covered with a tea towel, or matchboxes; the whole game fits on a lap tray or a train table
  • Cross-domain: writing labels is purposeful early writing (literacy); remembering which tin went where exercises working memory; “one more” tins lead straight into addition stories
  • Progression: quantities 1–3 with child-invented labels → include the empty tin → quantities to 5 → adult’s numeral labels and child fills → numerals to 10 → “one more / one less” label changes

Sources

  • Hughes, M. (1986), Children and Number: Difficulties in Learning Mathematics — the tins game and children’s invented written number symbols
  • Teaching Strategies GOLD — Objective 20c (connects numerals with their quantities) and Objective 14 (uses symbols and images to represent something not present)
  • Head Start ELOF — P-MATH 5 (associates a quantity with written numerals and begins to write numbers)
  • Montessori Mathematics — Cards and Counters; Spindle Boxes (linking numeral, quantity, and zero)
  • UK EYFS Development Matters (Reception) — link the number symbol (numeral) with its cardinal number value
  • CDC “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” — 5-year milestones (counts to 10; names some numbers between 1 and 5 when you point to them)