Friday, November 4, 2011

Getting Serious about Math Games!


image from: http://www.todaysparent.com/activities/10-kid-friendly-card-games

When it came to addition facts, my daughter needed to get them down. The only problem was if she sees flash cards or I use a timer, she freezes. She starts panicking and gives me the wrong answers at a slower pace. I didn't know what to do. I had to think of ways for her to practice her addition facts without the drill.

We started focusing on combinations of 10. Now her favorite combination is 7 + 3. I came up with some games that she has loved. Now my 5 year old knows most combinations that equal 10! We made math games a priority. Every morning after breakfast, we play 1-2 games. Here are games that I have made up. Each one has a little dance and song we do :)

Which Combination will Win?
(Probability for Combinations of 10)
Take 10 small objects that have 2 sides (like pennies or circle tokens with different colors on each side). We were actually studying poison dart frogs at the time, so I took beans and painted then blue on one side, let them dry and then red on the other side. First, my daughter made a list of all the possible combinations of 10 (9+1, 8+2, 7+3, etc.). This was good practice since she had to make the list each time we played. Then, we each chose one combination. Then, I put all the beans inside a cup, she shook them up and then poured them out. She counted how many blue and how many red and put a tally mark by that combination on our list. We did this 10 times. The person whose combination came up the most won!

Combination 10!
I take a stack of Uno cards (only using number cards). Each player is dealed 10 cards. They turn over all their cards and find pairs of numbers that equal 10 (5 and 5, 8 and 2, etc). Each player keeps their own matches. The leftover cards without matches go into a discard pile. After all the players have found matches, each player is dealed another 10 cards (until there are not enough cards to deal out more). The person that has the most matches of cards that equal 10 wins!

Slap that Ten
We use our uno cards. I have the stack of cards and turn over two cards. I continue to put new cards face up on the two cards. When both cards together make 10, the players have to slap that ten! They get all the cards on the stack (below the combination of 10). The winner is the person with the most cards at the end.

30 minus something
Each player is dealed 5 cards face down. All the other cards are scattered face up all over the floor. The game starts when the players turn over one of their 5 cards. They have to find the answer to 30 minus the card they turned over (For example, the card is 4, so the player thinks 30-4=26). They have grab the number 2 and 6 from any of the scattered cards on the floor to make 26. They put the 4, 2, and 6 together to make a set, and turn over their next card. This is a game of speed and all players work at the same time, without taking turns. I sometimes have different players have different numbers to minus from (one has 40 minus something, another person has 100 minus something, etc.)

Addition Battle-
Each player is dealt 2 cards face up. Each player solves the sum of their two cards. The highest sum takes all the cards. This is repeated until all cards are dealt. If there are two sums that are the highest and the same number, they have an addition battle. Addition battle is when two players put down two more cards and add their numbers to see who wins all the cards. The winner is the player with the most cards.

No comments: