This week's game is a combination of two of my favorite elements of a game.
First of all, you play with physical, tactile objects that you must analyze with 3-d spatial reasoning.
And secondly, the game is totally free!
The game is called Skyscrapers.
I was chatting recently with Molly Rawding (who previously suggested a great way to play Garbage with Tiny Polka Dot cards).
Molly mentioned offhand a game that sounded perfect for parents: quick to play, easy to learn, hard to master. And best of all - it's totally free!
All you need is paper and two colors of pen, pencil, or marker.
The game is called Sim.
One of my favorite places in the world is the #tmwyk hashtag on Twitter.
If you don’t know, #tmwyk stands for “Talking math with your kids” and it’s a great place to find examples of parents and kids having delightful, surprising mathematical conversations.
This week’s game came straight from the hashtag, courtesy of Allison Hintz. She and her kids invented this game, as you can see from her original tweet.
I first tried this game with my own kids about a month ago, and our car rides have never been the same since. Almost every time we get in the car, my daughter asks “Can we play the ‘When is it big’ game?”
So in her honor, I am coining the game When is X Big?
Two years ago, I sent out my first newsletter from Games for Young Minds.
At the time, I had a double-digit subscriber list, a list of ten games I wanted to recommend, and a vague sense that parents needed advice for how to help their kids engage with math at home.
Since then, I've recommended over 100 games, developed or adapted a few of my own, and even started a video channel to share some of my all-time favorite games. I've also learned a whole lot about games, math, and parenting along the way.
Today I'd love to share four big things I've learned since starting Games for Young Minds.
Did you sort your Halloween candy as a kid? Did you count how many pieces you got, splitting them into groups based on type or color or size? Did you alternate between eating good candy and bad, making sure you had some good ones left over at the end?
Because if you did, you used a ton of mathematical skills. And your kids can develop those same skills with a little activity I call Halloween Candy Inventory.
Writing about games every week, I sometimes worry that I'll run out.
After all, I've long since written about basically every game, free or commercial, that I knew about before beginning this newsletter back in 2017.
So I scour the internet, looking for ideas. And every once in a while, I stumble upon a cornucopia!
A couple of weeks ago, I found this British site called Cleave Books. I don't know anything about it, other than the fact that it has a TON of great games, puzzles, and classroom activities buried inside its site (which looks like a time machine to 2002).
The first game I played is called Rectangulation.
Something really special happens in Minnesota every Labor Day weekend.
It's called Math On-a-Stick, and it sounds like one of the most incredible spaces for kids to explore that I've heard of. At the Minnesota State Fair, a bunch of volunteers set up an entire area dedicated to letting kids play with mathematically rich toys.
It's run by Christopher Danielson, who is the author of How Many? and Which One Doesn't Belong?, as well as the creator of Tiling Turtles, 21st Century Pattern Blocks, and all sorts of other amazing math toys and ideas (I promise someday I'll stop constantly complimenting him (no I don't)).
Some day, I'll find a way to make it up to Math On-a-Stick. Maybe I'll even bring a game or two to play with! But until then, let me share a little game they play at the fair that is playable all over the place: Number Scavenger Hunt
I have officially entered the long, dark period of parenting known as The Age of After-School Activities.
As I write this newsletter, I am sitting in a restaurant, having eaten a dinner I didn't need just to justify leeching off their Wifi for an hour while my son is at Torah Time.
Fortunately, in the previous hour I got to pick him up from school, take him to get some frozen yogurt, and play a quick few rounds of a new game that I'm really enjoying: Sprouts.
Read MoreThis week's blog is jam packed!
I've got a brand-new video about my favorite board game ever, Blokus (more on that below)!
Not only that, I have two games to teach you this week! One is a fantastically fun road-trip game, and the second is its mathematical cousin.
I found both these games on the website of my friend John Golden, who is one of my favorite people to chat with about games and math. He is a math professor and a games addict, and his website is a cornucopia of awesome, mathy games.
Let's get into it! First up: Last Letter Loses!
Different contexts call for different games. Some of my favorite board games, although fun, require a lot of time and space to play.
We don't often have the ability to take over the whole kitchen table with a multi-hour Monopoly session. As parents, sometimes we just need something to keep our kids distracted in the car for a few minutes so they'll stop arguing about which song from Moana to listen to next.
Number Patterns is a perfect mini-game for these situations.
This week I'm sharing a game that is a mainstay in math classrooms all across the country.
The reasons are obvious: the game gets kids to use their knowledge of operations to solve problems, but in a way that feels much more like a creative exercise or a puzzle than most classroom activities.
While it's perfect for the elementary or middle school classroom, it's also a fun brain teaser to play with your kids. As long as they are decent with their multiplication facts, they're old enough to play!
The game is called 24.
This week's game is an invention by one of my favorite math teachers in the country: Joe Schwartz.
Joe has been writing beautifully about elementary math teaching for years at his blog Exit 10A. In fact, his writing was one of my first gateways into the wonderful world of early math.
Anyway, a few years ago he posted about a game he had invented called Number Grid Tic-Tac-Toe.
The second I read his post, I knew he was onto something special.
