AnneDwyer has a wonderful math game for kids that she wrote about on her wiki page.

The kids pick the number of digits (we usually start with 5). They put 5 dashes on their paper. I turn over 5 cards in a deck one by one. They have to decide where to put the numbers. Then each kid reads their number to me while I put it on the white board. The kids with the highest number wins.

For some reason, they love this game. On the next round, we go up one digit. Today, we went all the way up to 100 million.

It's a great game.

• They gain familiarity with large numbers. They get a lot of practice with reading large numbers out loud and hearing large numbers read out loud while it is being written on the board.

• They have to use strategy. In some games, we have a lot of high numbers at first which every kid puts in the same place. Then, they winner is the determined by the numbers in the ones and tens place. Conversely, sometimes we have a lot of low numbers in the beginning. Then the winner is determined by the highest digits. Much more interesting is when we have medium and low cards. Then, they have to do a lot more thinking about where the cards go.

• There are very concrete results from this game that allow us to explore numbers even further. In one game, 5 out of 8 kids had the same highest number. So we talk about why and when does this happen? In one game, we had one winner that was a lot higher than anyone else. When does this happen?

We have a gang of kids that run semi-wild in our neighborhood in the summer. They are very mixed in age (ranging from 7 through 11). I have thought about corralling the whole lot of them and bringing them in to teach them all some math together; it would do them all some good to work on it over the summer, and Ben would enjoy his math sessions more if he shared them. I'm a little stumped, though, about how to teach a wide range of ages and interest levels simultaneously.

I'd love to collect some more math games that are as simple and elegant as this one is, especially games that might appeal to a broad range of ages, and (like this one) start a math session off on the right foot.

-- CarolynJohnston - 08 Jul 2005

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