Students use teddy bear cutouts with, for example, shirts of two colors and shorts of three colors, and decide how many different outfits can be made by making a list of all possibilities and arranging them systematically. Students read A Three Hat Day and then try to create as many different hats as possible with three hats, a feather, a flower, and a ribbon as decoration. Students count the different hats they've made and discuss their answers. They can be challenged to find the numbers of small squares of each size on a larger square or rectangular grid. Students work in groups to figure out the rules of addition and placement that are used to pass from one row to the next in the diagram below, and use these rules to find the numbers in the next few rows.
Students play simple games and discuss why they make the moves they do.
Use networks and tree diagrams to represent everyday situations. Students find a way of getting from one island to another, in the graph described in the K-2 Overview laid out on the classroom floor with masking tape, by crossing exactly four bridges. Students can be challenged to find a way of visiting each island exactly once which returns them to their starting point. Similar activities can be found in Inside, Outside, Loops, and Lines by Herbert Kohl. A number of interesting map coloring ideas can be found in Inside, Outside, Loops and Lines by Herbert Kohl.