Strategy Games for Math Club

Strategy games are meant to help students practice their logical thinking skills.  Below you can find some of my students' favorites.  Brandon is playing Rush Hour on the iPad in the upper right corner.  It is puzzle game that increases in difficulty at each new level.  Kieran is trying to eliminate as many pegs as he can in the IQ Tester game (also found on the tables at Cracker Barrel).  Porter is working on his logical thinking skills by trying to find ways to get Slippy the penguin to his fish lunch.  There are many obstacles to cross in the game and more are added at each level.  Finally, the boys in the top left corner are playing Poison.  Using 13 cubes, students take turns choosing 1 or 2 cubes at a time.  The player to take the last cube loses the game.  They love it!

Square off is one of the most played games every year in my classes.  Students take turns connecting one dot  to another dot.  The player that connects the last dots of a square (closing the square) writes his/her initials in that square.  The player that has the most squares at the end of the game wins.

Fact Games for Math Club

Fact Games helps students practice their math facts (+ and -).  Some of the games are pictured below.  The group of three are playing Domino Top It (similar to War with dominoes).  Students need to add up the two sides of the domino they flipped over.  Brooke is practicing her facts while playing Math Chicken Number Scale.  A fact is displayed at the top and they have to find the answer to balance the bridge for the chicken to cross over.  The two boys in the bottom left are playing a game called It's Mine (also called Bump).  Players add up the total of two dice and try to cover the sums without getting "bumped" off by their opponent.  The last picture shows my first grade friend playing Math Monsters (a bingo game). 

Number Games in Math Club

Number games allows students to practice 1 to 1 correspondence, number identification, number sequence, number sense and comparing numbers.  Some number game ideas are pictured below.  In the top right corner my first grade friend is being timed to see if he can put numbers in order from least to greatest in less than 1 minute.  Below that, the girls are playing Highest Card (Traditionally called War).  The boys in the bottom corner are playing a game called Forward and Back.  It is similar to Candy Land as they move the game piece ahead and back depending on their dice roll.  Connor is playing Sam Phibian on the iPad.  The object is to help Sam the frog catch the correct number of insects of each kind for lunch.  

The game below, Shape Fill In, is a number game that encourages the students to use 1 to 1 counting and color in the number of sections on the star that corresponds with the number rolled on the die.  The person with the most filled in sections at the end is the winner.  This game and print out can be found on Shari Sloane's website, www.kidscount1234.com

Math Club Board for Math Centers

This is the picture of my Math Club board so far this year.  The 5 categories are Paper Practice, Number Games, Fact Games, Strategy Games and Math Tools.  I borrowed the categories and most of the games I use from The Sisters (www.thedailycafe.com).  I put the students into groups based off of what learning targets they are working on.  I rotate the groups through the categories on a daily basis while meeting with one group or individuals.  The Post It notes with a "T" on them are my temporary start to giving students choice of technology games on the iPads for part of the time.  Each month new games are added and some are taken off the board throughout the year.

Race To Trace-Numeral Writing Game

This game is a great way for students to practice the correct formation of numbers.  I got this game from Shari Sloane's wonderful website at www.kidscount1234.com
This website is full of center and game ideas for literacy and math.  
In this game, partners take turns rolling a die.  The player that rolls a number traces that number.  Partners take turns until one partner has traced all 18 numbers (there are 3 rows of 1-6).  There is also a variation of this game called Race To Trace-Addition.  In that game, students roll two dice and add the numbers together (practicing writing numbers 1-12).

Math Club Gets Started

We are discovering all of the wonderful math tools we can use during math.  We have had a chance to explore with unifix cubes, button counters, dominoes, people counters, tens/ones cubes, animal counters, pattern blocks and attribute blocks (flat shapes).  We have had fun creating patterns and designs during our first week of Math Club.
Math Club is our block of math time when I do guided math with small groups and individuals.  While I am working with students, the other students are engaged in using math tools, playing number games, fact games,  paper practice activities and strategy games.  My math club game categories are borrowed from the well known literacy experts, The Sisters.  They have a marvelous structure to work on math standards that allow students to have fun playing games (and learn at the same time!!!).  I'll post a picture of my Math Club board in the next few days.

Here are some pictures of my first graders working with the math tools these past two weeks!

Enemy Pie Teaches about Friendship

We read Enemy Pie by Derek Munson.  The book is about a young boy who was teased by a neighbor boy, Jeremy Ross.  He puts Jeremy on his enemy list.  His dad tells him he knows how to get rid of enemies for good.....bake an enemy pie!  Read the story or ask your first grader what happens in the rest of the story. This story is a great way to see how friendships can be created.  

My first graders created a list of yummy ingredients and a list of disgusting ingredients they would put in an enemy pie.  They glued their list of ingredient choices along with writing how many of each ingredient they would use (What a great informal assessment on numeral formation and number order).  

Finally, they completed their enemy pie posters by using the many colors in our scrap box to make an illustration of their pies!  

Great job first grade artists!