Kindergarten Math Games

Hi! It’s great to be back online after a very full holiday season.  We’re now back into the swing of things and I’d like to share some new activities the kids and I have started into. I’ll start first with my 5 year old’s math activities the past couple of days:

DD is learning basic addition.  This week we’re working on the 5s.  I gave her the colored construction paper and paper clips (not the chart!) and had her figure out how to divide the paper clips different ways to make 5.
I bought a colorful pack of Crazy Eight cards from the dollar store and used them to play the “Make 5” game with DD. First I removed the 6s, 7s, and 8s from the deck and set them aside.  I shuffled the deck (numbers 0-5) and handed each player three cards.  The first player had to either pick up the face-up card or draw a new card.  She had to make five with her cards. If she put down a pair she had to keep three cards in her hand, drawing and placing new cards down until she couldn’t go any more.  The great thing about this game was that if DD went first, she always won (and so was doubly motivated to play again and again!). We’ll play the same game for 6s (and eventually 7s).
 

We’ve been going over the days of the week and placing them in the proper order.
This is an game to reinforce odd-even, less and more (we’ve been playing this for nearly a year now from time-to-time).  I cut up butterflies from prekinders.com and made up my own dice. One die has large numbers (10-16) and another die has smaller numbers (4-9).  We each choose a die, roll it and collect that number of butterflies in our net. Then one player spins the spinner to see who wins the round.

This game is from Peggy Kaye’s Games for Math (I highly recommend this book or any of her books!!) and is supposed to help reinforce the idea of regrouping (moving nine singles+1 to the large square).  I think I had too many “win 10” slots on my spinner, but DD enjoyed this game nonetheless! The first player to fifty won the game.

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