Missing number hunt

There are lots of 10x10 number square activities available to help children with learning the numbers up to 100, but which require them to be able to write missing numbers in gaps.  My son's writing isn't quite up to that yet although his counting and number recognition is ready for it.  I've been finding ways to make number square activities that have hidden numbers to reveal, but I decided to do an Easter egg hunt for missing numbers for him to stick on.

The Easter bunny's number square is missing some numbers

The story was that his Easter bunny (called Fresno after I bought him on a family trip to California one Easter many years ago) had lost some of his numbers, and needed help to find them.  I glued a number square with some missing numbers on an Easter egg shape and sat his bunny holding it under the word 'help'!

I had a set of plastic Easter egg shells which have been used several times this week for various egg hunt activities, and inside I hid the numbers that were missing from the number square.  I've included a printable pdf file download of my number square and the missing numbers to cut out in case anyone wants to replicate it without the effort of making your own.  I also made a number 101 and hid it in the golden egg from the pack of plastic eggs as a special surprise for the Easter bunny!



My son immediately wanted to help the bunny find his missing numbers and counted through the number square to identify the numbers that were missing.  He's very good at working out which number is missing when they are in order but sometimes he still gets in a muddle about two digit numbers when he reads them e.g. confusing 26 and 62.

Partially completed

He then set to work searching the garden (along with his equally enthusiastic little brother).  He was really excited to find numbers and stick them onto the number square with a glue stick (but he was less impressed when his brother found eggs first)!  He found most of them, and then was struggling to find some - even though they were in places I'd hidden the same eggs for other activities earlier in the week - so needed a few hints.

What's inside the golden egg?

He found the golden egg fairly early on but insisted on holding it to help him search and then opening it at the end to find the special number 101.  I wanted to see what he made of the number bigger than 100 and he seemed unfazed by the idea and agreed it needed sticking under number 91.

Where should we put 101?

After sticking on number 101, he proudly presented the completed number square to Fresno the Easter bunny.  We got a good amount of exercise running around searching for eggs as well as a nice bit of maths practice out of this activity, which was definitely a success!