Ask students a question such as “What’s your favorite sport to play?” Give them choices: baseball, soccer, basketball and football. Place a picture of each representative ball next to a different colored linking cube. Students choose one sport and link same-colored cubes together to form a "Favorite Sports" bar graph.
Give each student a bag of linking cubes. Verbalize and demonstrate a pattern you want students to duplicate such as “Take one red cube and join it to a blue cube. Add two yellow cubes.” Take the activity to a higher level by drawing a pattern on the front board and asking students to replicate it with linking cubes.
Demonstrate how to use cubes to measure objects. Place students with partners and give each pair a bag of linking cubes and different items in the classroom to measure in cubes. Students share their results afterward in a group setting. Challenge volunteers to guess the size of objects in the classroom such as “10 cubes long” or “two cubes long.” Have the children check their estimates.
Give each student a bag of linking cubes and ask them to do this activity with you. Start with no cubes and then pick up one. Count orally from zero to 10, each time linking another cube. Now count backwards from 10 to zero, each time taking off one cube.
Give each student a bag of linking cubes. Tell a story problem and ask students to act it out with their cubes. Such as “There were three children on the swing set. Two more joined them. How many are on the swing set?” or “Mrs. Smith has five jump ropes. Two children took jump ropes to the playground. How many jump ropes are left in the classroom?”
This activity works well in a learning station. Students use a set of addition flash cards. For 3 + 2 = 5, they reproduce the problem in linking cubes: three red cubes plus two yellow cubes equal five total cubes.
Place three to five large colored poster boards on the floor to match colors of your linking cubes. Provide a large tub of cubes, mixed with these same colors. Instruct students to sort the mixture into individual colors by placing them on like-colored poster boards. Set a timer to determine how long it takes to sort the cubes in the tub. In the future, challenge students to beat their previous times.
Arrange students in pairs and give each pair a bag of linking cubes. Each student creates an individual pattern with the cubes. The partners exchange creations and replicate their partner’s cube pattern. For advanced students, allow them to look at one another’s patterns and hide them behind their backs.