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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Math Basics

I've explained to Joey how much easier math is when you have all the basic operations memorized. It's like being able to sight read a large number of words. And the only way to get good at either of these things is practice. (As you can tell, we don't unschool around here... not yet anyway.)

And, not surprisingly, anytime I ask her to practice her math facts she balks.

Until we started playing with these...

2008 01 09 001

You can do this with regular dice, but you'll only get practice with 1 thru 6. These are role playing dice for Dungeons and Dragons. I'm guessing you can get them at comic book shops.

We've come up with a couple of games and I'm sure there are many more to be discovered.

Game 1- Each person takes two dice and, on the count of three, they toss them. As fast as they can, each person shouts out the sum of the dice (or the product or difference, depending on the game). You can make it more difficult by tossing 3 (or 4) dice each.

Game 2- One person rolls two dice where the other person can't see. Then they say, "The sum of these dice is X and the product is XX." The second person then figures out what the two dice are or, to make it slightly more difficult, they figure out the difference between them.
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4 comments:

  1. tammyJanuary 9, 2008 at 7:06 PM

    You can get dice like that, plus a lot of variations from teacher supply stores. I actually use large dice with my kindergarten kids to teach counting and addition.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JennyJanuary 9, 2008 at 10:02 PM

    That's a good idea. I really should start playing something like that to improve my math speed.

    It sure would be nice to not have to count out the "touch points" in my head. Does anyone else remember the little dots and circles on numbers? It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I just wish I had memorized the basics.

    ReplyDelete
  3. WendyJanuary 10, 2008 at 2:29 PM

    Tammy, I've got to go by a teacher supply store one of these days. I'm a sucker for places like that.

    Jenny, Touch points... what a strange concept that was. Weren't some of the dots circled and others just plain, depending on how many times you count them?

    Maybe you and Joey can practice together. :)

    Myself, I do weird things in my head for math. Like 5+7... I think if you add one to 5 and subtract one from 7, then you'd have two 6's which is 12. Or I rearrange them into groups of 5 and add the rest.

    ReplyDelete
  4. auroramaeJanuary 12, 2008 at 1:12 PM

    We played Yatzee the other night with Jaden and to my excitement realized it was also a fun way to learn math.

    ReplyDelete

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