## Playful Math Education Carnival 123: Hundred Chart Edition

Do you enjoy math? I hope so!

If not, browsing this post just may change your mind.

Welcome to the 123rd edition of the Playful Math Education Blog Carnival — a smorgasbord of delectable tidbits of mathy fun.

The Playful Math Carnival is like a free online magazine devoted to learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to high school. This month’s edition features $\left ( 1 + 2 + 3 \right )^{2} = 36 \:$ articles from bloggers all across the internet.

You’re sure to find something that will delight both you and your child.

By tradition, we start the carnival with a puzzle in honor of our 123rd edition. But if you would like to jump straight to our featured blog posts, click here to see the Table of Contents.

Or more, depending on how you count. And on whether I keep finding things to squeeze in under the looming deadline. But if there are more, then there are certainly 36. Right?

## The 1-2-3 Puzzle

Write down any whole number. It can be a single-digit number, or as big as you like.

For example:
64,861,287,124,425,928

Now, count up the number of even digits (including zeros), the number of odd digits, and the total number of digits it contains. Write those numbers down in order, like this:
even 12, odd 5, total 17

Then, string those numbers together to make a new long number, like so:
12,517

Perform the same operation on this new number. Count the even digits, odd digits, and total length:
even 1, odd 4, total 5

And do it again:
145
even 1, odd 2, total 3

If you keep going, will your number always turn into 123?

## Math Game: Number Train

Math Concepts: number symbols, numerical order, thinking ahead.
Players: two or more.
Equipment: one math deck of playing cards (remove face cards and jokers), or a double deck for more than four players; additional cards to use as train cars.

### Set-Up

Give each player four to six miscellaneous cards (such as the face cards and jokers you removed from the card deck) to serve as the cars of their number trains.

Lay these cards face down in a horizontal row, as shown. Shuffle the math card deck and spread it on the table as a fishing pond.

### How to Play

On your turn, draw one card and play it face up on one of your train cars. The numbers on your train must increase from left to right, but they do not need to be in consecutive order. If you do not have an appropriate blank place for your card, you have two choices:

• Mix the new card back into the fishing pond.

• Use the new number to replace one of your other cards, and then discard the old one.

The first player to complete a train of numbers that increases from left to right wins the game.

### Variations

House Rule: Decide how strict you will be about the “increases from left to right” rule and repeated numbers. Does “1, 3, 3, 7, 8” count as a valid number train? Or will the player have to keep trying for a card to replace one of the threes?

For older players: You can adapt Number Train to play with more advanced students:

This post is an excerpt from my book Counting & Number Bonds: Math Games for Early Learners, available now at your favorite online book dealer.

One of my favorite stores, Rainbow Resource Center, is offering several of my books at a great discount.

Check them out!

## My Favorite Math Games

Take a break from textbook math and enjoy yourself!

I like to use games as a warm-up with my co-op math circle. Some homeschoolers make every Friday a game day, and some turn gaming into a family lifestyle.

If you’d like to add more play to your family’s day, check out Cait’s 2017 Gameschooling Challenge.

“Playing games with your kids offers a host of educational benefits, plus you build relationships and make memories. I am constantly amazed by the amount of learning that happens when I sit down to play games with my children.”

—Caitlin Fitzpatrick Curley
Gameschool Challenge

### Family Games for All Ages

“Games put children in exactly the right frame of mind for learning difficult things. Children relax when they play — and they concentrate. They don’t mind repeating certain facts or procedures over and over, if repetition is part of the game.”

### Accessible to Young Children

“Coming back from winter break can be hard. Everyone is sleepy, unfocused, and daydreaming of the holiday gifts that await them at home after school. And that’s just the teachers!”

—Andrew Gael
Beat the Back to School Blues…Play a Math Game

### For Elementary Students

“If you play these games and your child learns only that hard mental effort can be fun, you will have taught something invaluable.”

“Mathematics is mental play, the essence of creative problem solving. This is the truth we need to impart to our children, more important than fractions or decimals or even the times tables. Math is a game, playing with ideas.”

They don’t have to be math! Please share in the comment section below!

This post is part of the #MTBoS #MtbosBlogsplosion blogging challenge.

## New Book: Multiplication & Fraction Games

It’s here! My long-awaited upper-elementary Math You Can Play games book has finally hit the online bookstores.

Multiplication & Fractions features 25 kid-tested games, offering a variety of challenges for school-age students. Children master several math models that provide a sturdy foundation for understanding multiplication and fractions. The games feature times table facts and more advanced concepts such as division, fractions, decimals, and multistep mental math.

170 pages, ebook: $5.99, paperback:$17.99.

### Multiplication & Fraction Games

Maybe you never really understood what multiplication means or what fractions are? As long as you start with an open mind and are willing to engage playfully, the activities in the book can help you as you help your kids.
Anecdotally, these two areas are the first major stumbling point for students in their math studies. The sequencing in the book will help kids develop a strong foundation.
Kids (and parents!) find these games fun. I’ve been field testing math games for the last 18 months and keep seeing how engaged kids get when playing math games.

— Joshua Greene
Multiplication & Fractions Math Games from Denise Gaskins (a review)

Chapters include:

• Mathematical Models: Learn the basic pictures that help support your child’s comprehension.
• Conquer the Times Tables: Enjoy practicing the math facts until correct answers become automatic.
• Mixed Operations: Give mental muscles a workout with games that require number skills and logical thinking.
• Fractions and Decimals: Master equivalent fractions, work with decimal place value, and multiply fractions and decimal numbers.

If you are a parent, these games provide opportunities to enjoy quality time with your children. If you are a classroom teacher, use the games as warm-ups and learning center activities or for a relaxing review day at the end of a term. If you are a tutor or homeschooler, make games a regular feature in your lesson plans to build your students’ mental math skills.

So what are you waiting for? Clear off a table, grab a deck of cards, and let’s play some math!

It starts with models that are visual explanations of the concepts. Gaskins also breaks learning these concepts into comfortable steps that emphasize patterns and relationships, the real ideas that are behind properly understanding multiplication and fractions (indeed, math generally).
The sequence of games in each section starts by building familiarity and then fluency (speed) to solidify all of that work.

— Joshua Greene
Multiplication & Fractions Math Games from Denise Gaskins (a review)

### Multiplication & Fraction Printables

Most of the Math You Can Play games use materials you already have around the house, such as playing cards or dice. But this book introduces multiplication and fractions with several games using two special mathematical model card decks.

Click here to download the Multiplication & Fraction Printables, featuring all the math model cards, hundred charts, and game boards you will need for any game in the book.

## The Value of Math Games

From Peggy Kaye’s classic book Games for Math:

“Games put children in exactly the right frame of mind for learning difficult things.

“Children relax when they play — and they concentrate. They don’t mind repeating certain facts or procedures over and over, if repetition is part of the game.

“Children throw themselves into playing games the way they never throw themselves into filling out workbook pages.

“The games solidify the achievements of children who are already good at math, and they shore up children who need shoring up. They teach or reinforce many of the skills that a formal curriculum teaches, plus one skill that formal teaching sometimes leaves out — the skill of having fun with math, of thinking hard and enjoying it.

“If you play these games and your child learns only that hard mental effort can be fun, you will have taught something invaluable.”

## Number Game Printables

One step closer to getting my long-awaited Multiplication & Fraction Games book out — I finished the printables file! At least, I hope I’ve finished. Sometimes it seems like whack-a-typo never ends…

### Multiplication & Fraction Printables

Click here to download the Multiplication & Fraction Printables, featuring mathematical model cards, hundred charts, and game boards to accompany the upcoming Math You Can Play: Multiplication & Fractions book.

The Multiplication & Fractions ebook will come out sometime in November, and the paperback should follow in time for Christmas. If you’re interested, my newsletter subscribers will get a special introductory sale price whenever the book is published. Join now!

You may also want to check out:

### Number Game Printables Pack

Click here to download the Number Game Printables Pack, featuring hundred charts, graph paper, and game boards from the first two Math You Can Play books.

Also, 0–99 charts, and bottoms-up versions, too. (See my blog post Math Debates with a Hundred Chart.) And a fun cut-and-fold game board for playing Shut the Box.

### Permission to Use These Files

You have permission to copy and use these game boards and worksheets in your own local classroom, home school, math circle, co-op class, etc. But you may not post them on your own website (though you can link to this post, if you like) or sell them. If you’re not sure how copyright works on the Internet, check out Daniel Scocco’s Copyright Law: 12 Dos and Don’ts.