Games – Page 7 – Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math

Math Game: Number Train

Posted on October 31, 2018September 29, 2023 by Denise Gaskins

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.

Two of the train cars have passengers. Which numbers could you put on the other cars?

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:

Play Joe Schwartz’s version with two-digit numbers.
Check out John Golden’s fantastic Decimal Point Pickle.
Or experiment with exponential number trains.

Deal Alert!

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

Check them out!

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

This blog is reader-supported.

If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please join me on Patreon for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities.

If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal: paypal.me/DeniseGaskinsMath. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

“Math Game: Number Train” copyright © 2018 by Denise Gaskins.

My Favorite Math Games

Posted on January 7, 2017September 29, 2023 by Denise Gaskins

Take a break from textbook math and enjoy yourself!

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

$favorite-math-games$

“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.”

—Peggy Kaye
Games for Math

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.”

—Peggy Kaye
Games for Math

Middle School to Adult

“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.”

—Denise Gaskins
Let’s Play Math: How Families Can Learn Math Together—and Enjoy It

Your Turn: What Are Your Favorite Games?

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

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This blog is reader-supported.

If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please join me on Patreon for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities.

If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal: paypal.me/DeniseGaskinsMath. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

“My Favorite Math Games” copyright © 2017 by Denise Gaskins. Image at the top of the post copyright © Denise Gaskins.

New Book: Multiplication & Fraction Games

Posted on November 15, 2016December 30, 2024 by Denise Gaskins

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.

Click here to find Multiplication & Fractions at your favorite bookstore.

Multiplication & Fraction Games

$multfrac-300$ 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!

Check It Out

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

Posted on November 2, 2016September 29, 2023 by Denise Gaskins

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.”

— Peggy Kaye
Games for Math

Sample Peggy’s Games for Math

Grasshopper
Star Count
Numberbow
Suits Up, Suits Down
Games for reading and writing, too!
Or check out the game posts on Let’s Play Math blog.

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This blog is reader-supported.

If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please join me on Patreon for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities.

If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal: paypal.me/DeniseGaskinsMath. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

“The Value of Math Games” copyright © 2016 by Denise Gaskins.

Number Game Printables

Posted on October 27, 2016August 7, 2019 by Denise Gaskins

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.

Math You Can Play Combo in Paperback and Ebook

Posted on August 20, 2016August 7, 2019 by Denise Gaskins

If you’re interested in helping children learn math, I have special offer just for you:

Save 20% off the individual ebooks or 35% off the paperback prices when you buy a combined 2-books-in-1 edition featuring the first two books in the Math You Can Play series together.

The 42 kid-tested games are simple to learn, quick to play, and require minimal preparation. Most use common household items such as cards or dice.

Free Online Preview

“Although the cover says games for young learners, the beauty of this book is that most of the games can easily be scaled up for older kids, teens, and even adults. My youngest is four and my oldest is 14, and I will be pulling games for all of them out of this book!

“I appreciate that most of the games are low floor, high ceiling – easy for a child to access, but can be played at a higher level through strategy or slight alterations to the rules. These are not drills disguised as games, but activities that require problem solving and strategy as well as calculation.”

— Kindle customer review

Continue reading Math You Can Play Combo in Paperback and Ebook

Active Math Game: Rock

Posted on October 5, 2015September 29, 2023 by Denise Gaskins

Gordon Hamilton of Math Pickle posted Rock – Low unique number game for grades K–2. If you have a set of active kids and a few minutes to spare, give it a try!

https://youtu.be/QzDCosAIuZA&rel=0

How to Play Rock

Everyone makes a rock shape with eyes closed.
Everyone chooses a number: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 …
Teacher calls out numbers consecutively, starting at 0.
When a student hears their number being called they immediately raise a hand. When the teacher tags the hand, they stand up.
If more than one hand was raised, those students lose. They become your helpers, tagging raised hands.
If only one hand was raised, that child wins the round.

“Each game takes about 45 seconds,” Hamilton says. “This is part of the key to its success. Children who have not learned the art of losing are quickly thrown into another game before they have a chance to get sad.”

The experience of mathematics should be profound and beautiful. Too much of the regular K-12 mathematics experience is trite and true. Children deserve tough, beautiful puzzles.

—Gordon Hamilton

What Happens When Grownups Play Rock

What are the best numbers to pick? Patrick Vennebush hosted on online version of the game at his Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks blog a few years back, though we didn’t have to bend over into rocks‌—‌which is a good thing for some of us older folks.

Vennebush also posted a finger-game version suitable for small groups of all ages, called Low-Sham-Bo:

On the count of 1-2-3, each person “throws” out a hand showing any number of fingers from zero to five.
The winner is the person who throws the smallest unique number.

You may want to count “Ready, set, go!” for throwing out fingers, so the numbers in the count don’t influence the play.

The official name for this sort of game is Lowest Unique Bid Auction.

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This blog is reader-supported.

If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please join me on Patreon for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities.

If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal: paypal.me/DeniseGaskinsMath. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

“Active Math Game: Rock” copyright © 2015 by Denise Gaskins. .

New Hundred Chart Game: Odd-Even-Prime Race

Posted on August 25, 2015February 8, 2024 by Denise Gaskins

Counting all the fractional variations, my massive blog post 30+ Things to Do with a Hundred Chart now offers nearly forty ideas for playing around with numbers from preschool to prealgebra.

Here is the newest entry, a variation on #10, the “Race to 100” game:

(11.5) Play “Odd-‌Even-‌Prime Race.″ Roll two dice. If your token is starting on an odd number, move that many spaces forward. From an even number (except 2), move backward — but never lower than the first square. If you are starting on a prime number (including 2), you may choose to either add or multiply the dice and move that many spaces forward. The first person to reach or pass 100 wins the game.
[Hat tip: Ali Adams in a comment on another post.]

And here’s a question for your students:

If you’re sitting on a prime number, wouldn’t you always want to multiply the dice to move farther up the board? Doesn’t multiplying always make the number bigger?

* * *

This blog is reader-supported.

If you’d like to help fund the blog on an on-going basis, then please join me on Patreon for mathy inspiration, tips, and an ever-growing archive of printable activities.

If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal: paypal.me/DeniseGaskinsMath. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

“New Hundred Chart Game: Odd-Even-Prime Race” copyright © 2015 by Denise Gaskins. Image at the top of the post copyright © geishaboy500 (CC BY 2.0).

Review Game: Once Through the Deck

Posted on June 9, 2015February 8, 2024 by Denise Gaskins

Math Concepts: basic facts of addition, multiplication.
Players: one.
Equipment: one deck of math cards (poker- or bridge-style playing cards with the face cards and jokers removed).

The best way to practice the math facts is through the give-and-take of conversation, orally quizzing each other and talking about how you might figure the answers out. But occasionally your child may want a simple, solitaire method for review.

Continue reading Review Game: Once Through the Deck

Math Game: Fan Tan (Sevens)

Posted on May 13, 2015February 8, 2024 by Denise Gaskins

Math Concepts: sorting by attribute (card suits), counting up, counting down, standard rank of playing cards (aces low).
Players: two or more, best with four to six.
Equipment: one complete deck of cards (including face cards), or a double deck for more than six players. Provide a card holder for young children.

How to Play

Deal out all the cards, even if some players get more than others. The player to the dealer’s left begins by playing a seven of any suit. If that player does not have a seven, then the play passes left to the first player who does.

After that, on your turn you may lay down another seven or play on the cards that are already down. If you cannot play, say, “Pass.”

Once a seven is played in any suit, the six and the eight of that suit may be played on either side of it, forming the fan. Then the five through ace can go on the six in counting-down order, and the nine through king can go on the eight, counting up. You can arrange these cards to overlap each other so the cards below are visible, or you can square up the stacks so only the top card is seen.

Continue reading Math Game: Fan Tan (Sevens)