I remember my first day of afterschool tutoring at MathSTARS like it was last year...I came into a room full of strangers - students and tutors I'd never met before. Cautiously and timidly I was introduced to everyone. As everyone got back to their work, I tried to start up a conversation with a student about her paper on wanting to be a psychologist. Then we jumped into one of the best Apples to Apples game I've played.
While Apples to Apples is not a math game, MathSTARS has been encouraging students to play interactive board or card games with the tutors after they're done with their work. It's community building, relationship boosting, and actual interactions with people (instead of consistent texting) which make MathSTARS such a fun place to be.
There are a handful of really great math games that I thought of before writing this blog: dominoes, most card games, and the marketed math games like the 24 game. Unfortunately, there aren't many other math related board or card games out there. Please let me know if there are others.
 | Nevertheless, dominoes is a simple math game that very young children can play and develop their counting skills and later on, their strategic planning. |
| Lots of card games that rely on luck and probability are good games to play with students or young children. Poker is a great example of probability analysis and learning to gauge risk v. outcomes. For younger children, blackjack is one of the simplest games that requires minimal math and develops a good sense of probability in terms of what card might come up next. Even games like Old Maid have children matching pairs of cards and avoiding the Queen by probability and chance. |  |
-------------------
At the beginning of the computer age my first games were math games. My dad bought different learning games for us, we used to have dozens of educational games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (which was too difficult for us back then), The Magic School Bus Series, Oregon, Yukon, and Amazon Trails, a game called Math Journey Spiral (one of our favorites), and finally the Number Munchers games!
There are plenty of math games online to play, below are just a few.
Again the Calculation Nation games. I finally beat the computer again! 2nd time in however many I've tried at Calculation Nation.
The game I keep trying to beat is the Ker-splash game. Lots of the other games are good for practice, but the Ker-splash game was so challenging I had to beat it!
My results:
For x=8, y=6
Math.Rules - 33x + 32y + 49 = 505 (this one's for my homies at home! :)
Calculation nation - 25x + 44y + 29 = 493
I also got a comment and link from hoodamath games. I haven't had a chance to play through some of the games, but I will report back to the blog later tonight, I have to run to tutoring and will finish up my thoughts on math and games!
.
No comments:
Post a Comment