Geoboards are manipulatives that use pegs on a board with rubber bands for kids to create shapes or images. Kids love using geoboards because they encourage learning through play. In the activities below, kids can use geoboards to create letters, numbers, and shapes. They can also use geoboards to explore important math concepts like perimeter, diameter, and area. The activities below encourage creative thinking and fine motor development. Here are 24 great geoboard activities that kids and teachers will love!
1. Geoboard Gourd
This is a great activity for kids to do in the Fall. All you need is a gourd, golf tees, a rubber mallet, and rubber bands. Kids will use the mallet to knock the golf tees into the gourd which will create their own geoboard. This is a great activity for fine motor skills.
Learn More: Parenting Chaos
2. Constellation Geoboards
This activity is great for teaching about astronomy. Kids will recreate constellation patterns using geoboards. They make the geoboard using corkboard and will then follow the constellation patterns to make the star shapes.
Learn More: Babble Dabble Do
3. Letter Drawing Geoboards
This geoboard activity is appropriate for young students learning their letters and sounds. Kids will use larger pegs and pre-cut bands to follow letter patterns.
Learn More: Number Dyslexia
4. Online Geoboard
An online geoboard is a great resource for schools with one-to-one devices or for kids who are learning at home. The website has geoboard cards for kids to recreate. There are also different categories of activities including geometry and area.
Learn More: Toy Theater
5. Build a House
This is a fun activity where kids get to build their own house using a geoboard and different colored rubber bands. This activity challenges students’ creativity, fine motor skills, and pattern development. Plus, they can show off their house creation to their friends.
Learn More: Early Math Counts
6. Geoboard Challenges
Challenge students with geoboard cards. Students will recreate the shapes on the cards using rubber bands and geoboards. They can also create their own shapes on paper and then recreate their shape on the geoboard.
Learn More: Playdough To Plato
7. Geoboard Snowflakes
This Winter geoboard activity is fun for all ages. Kids use a geoboard and white rubber bands to create snowflakes. This is a great opportunity to work on symmetry and creating symmetrical shapes. Students can use snowflake templates, or they can use their imaginations!
Learn More: Frugal Fun 4 Boys
8. Geoboard Roads
Kids will use a geoboard to create roads for cars. This activity is even more fun if kids build their roads on geoboards together. This mom also had kids create their “geoboard” on a larger bulletin board with push pins.
Learn More: Hands-On As We Grow
9. Food Web With Geoboards
This geoboard activity combines geoboards with science. Kids will use geoboards and flashcards to show the food chain and what animals eat. This website includes free printable animal cards as well. Kids will use rubber bands and corkboards to show links between animals and what they eat.
Learn More: B-Inspired Mama
10. Sorting and Matching Geoboard
For this geoboard activity, kids will match colored push pins with the appropriate colored rubber band. This activity teaches kids their colors and helps them practice color matching and names. They also work on fine motor skills.
Learn More: Learning 4 Kids
11. Math Geoboard Tasks
This activity is good for a review day or to fill extra time in class without losing valuable instructional time. Students will use their geoboards to complete fifteen different tasks. Teachers can make this a competition or a self-check assessment.
Learn More: Thought Co.
12. Alphabet Matching
This is an appropriate activity for lower elementary students or pre-k learners. Kids will use geoboards to match capital letters to their lowercase representation. Kids will practice their letters and sounds through motor play. All this lesson requires besides a geoboard and rubber bands are letter decals.
Learn More: Play Teach Repeat
13. Line Segments on Geoboards
This lesson is for upper elementary. Students will use geoboards to show their understanding of line segments. Students will create line segments that touch nine pegs-no more, no less. Students then have to label the segments as parallel, intersecting, or perpendicular.
Learn More: Math Solutions
14. Every Day Shapes
This geoboard lesson is for kindergartners. Students will use geoboards to create shapes. Then, they will also discuss important mathematical concepts such as area, angles, and perimeter. The benefit of this lesson is that students can learn about multiple concepts in one lesson.
Learn More: REMC.org
15. Geometry and Geoboards
This is a great lesson to introduce geometry and trigonometry vocabulary to high school students. Students explore visual representations of tangent lines, secants lines, sectors, circles, radii, and diameters.
Learn More: Real-World Learners
16. Area With a Geoboard
This lesson explores areas in different shapes using geoboards. Each geoboard square counts as one unit. Students will create the shapes from the cards on their geoboard, and will then calculate the area. Students will also create shapes with a specified area on task cards.
Learn More: Learner.org
17. Snowball Geoboards
This activity encourages creativity with geoboards. Kids will create geoboard “snowballs” using Styrofoam, golf tees, and rubber bands. Kids can connect snowballs to each other as well; creating a multidimensional geoboard.
Learn More: Fun A Day
18. Geoboard Maze
Students can use corkboard and pushpins to make a larger geoboard maze. Then, kids use marbles to get through the maze. This lesson helps engage kids in imaginative play and spatial learning. Parents or teachers can challenge kids to get through the maze in different ways!
Learn More: B-Inspired Mama
19. Light Bright Geoboard
This geoboard is fun to play with and fun to look at. Kids will use the traditional Light Bright and rubber bands to make their own geoboard. They can use task cards with numbers and shapes to create light-up images. They can also match colors with rubber bands.
Learn More: And Next Comes L
20. Bathmat Geoboard
Kids love to explore new textures. Instead of using a traditional geoboard, kids can use a bathmat as a geoboard. The texture is more rubbery and the “pegs” are wider and flimsy. This is a great way to help kids work on fine motor skills and problem-solving.
Learn More: How Wee Learn
21. Crazy Geoboard
This geoboard activity doubles as an art project. Kids will use different materials and a foam board to create a unique geoboard. They can use straws, rubber bands, buttons, and anything else they can think of to make a crazy geoboard.
Learn More: Pickle Bums
22. Muffin Tin Geoboard
If you’re looking for a quick geoboard activity to do at home, you can use an upside-down muffin tin. Kids will work on fine motor skills using large rubber bands and the muffin tin acts as large pegs. Kids can create their own images or they can work on stretching the rubber bands from one cup to the other.
Learn More: And Next Comes L
23. Christmas Tree Geoboard
This is a fun Winter geoboard activity where kids will create their own Christmas tree. They will use Styrofoam cones, golf tees, and different colored rubber bands to create the perfect holiday decoration. This activity encourages creative thinking and fine motor development.
Learn More: Fun A Day
24. Exploring Length
This is an activity that uses a digital geoboard, however, it can be adapted to use real geoboards as well. Each task asks students to compare segments in order to explore the length and demonstrate proficiency with the Pythagorean Theorem.
Learn More: Teacher Desmos
14 Of The Greatest Geologic Time Scale Activities For Middle School