When my son’s math summer camp ended, the teacher told me
about the games they had played in class. Games? Really? He showed me the games and explained how each of them taught math skills – even strategy.
I had no idea that chess was a math game, but apparently it is.
Since neither my husband nor I know how to play chess or,
truthfully, really want to learn, I thought checkers might be a more agreeable
game for our family. To prove that playing checkers truly was educational, I
did what every person does when they have an unanswered question – I Googled
it.
According to Misty
Karam on LoveToKnow.com, checkers can teach important pre-math skills like
sorting by color, directions (e.g. forward, backward, and diagonal), cause/effect,
logical thinking, and reasoning. Cool, huh?
What you need:
- 24 plastic bottle caps (or 12 of one kind, and 12 of another; it helps if the lids will nest inside one another when stacked)
- Plain colored cardstock in two colors (if you plan to add math problems to your checkers board, make sure one of the papers is a light enough color that dry-erase ink will be legible)
- 1 sheet of posterboard measuring 14-inches square (or larger)
- 1 sheet of sticker paper (optional) or stickers
- Dry-Erase markers (optional, if you laminate your board)
To make our checkers board, I used my Fiskars paper cutter
and cut out 32 squares (measuring 1 ¾-inches) in one color paper and 32 squares
of the same size from another color of paper. Then one by one my son and I
glued these down, alternating the colors, onto a 14-inch square piece of
posterboard. (You’ll end up with an 8 by 8 grid of squares.) Then I took the “board”
to a local office paper/copy shop to be laminated.
Since I had plans to work some addition and subtraction practice into
our checkers game, I designed circular plus and minus stickers to print on
sticker paper and cut them out with my Martha Stewart Punch All Over the Page™ 1 ½-inch circle punch.
These fit perfectly on the 24 plastic Gatorade bottle lids I’d saved during the
summer. (You can download my lid stickers here. Truthfully, though, you don’t
need these stickers or a fancy punch.
Simply add 12 of the same stickers to the tops of half the lids so that you can
distinguish between the two opponents’ checkers.)
Before we started to
play, I added some subtraction and addition problems with a dry-erase marker to the game board on colored
squares we’d be playing on (on our board, we play on the gray squares). Every
time that my son jumped one of my checkers, he had to answer the math problem
underneath. (Need a refresher on how to play checkers? I did. Go here.)
My son has played
this game every day since we made it. He even wrote and illustrated his own checkers
rule book (his own idea!). The kid is going
crazy for this game, which makes saving the lids and gluing all those squares
totally worth it in my book!
This is super fantastic! Thanks for sharing! FkapJack Educational Resources
ReplyDeleteLOVE it! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThat's wonderful! Love the idea. I've pinned it too! Visiting from www.livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com Linky Party
ReplyDeletegreat idea! but i think i'm just going to make over an old board to make it easier on me! LOL!
ReplyDeleteHow cool! I keep thinking that it's time to teach daughter to play checkers - your post has completely convinced me :)
ReplyDeleteAs you saw I featured this wonderfully creative Math idea at Living Life Intentionally Linky Party! Thanks so much for sharing & I can't wait to see what else you link up! I have created a featured button that you are more than welcome to grab at this Saturdays Linky Party =-)
ReplyDeleteI love this - I'm going to link this on our blog. Please come and visit our post today on games:
ReplyDeletehttp://sistersplayinghouse.blogspot.com/2012/03/kids-week-games-games-games.html
This is brilliant! Thanks for the great idea :D I'm making things for my Games Cupboard in school at the moment and this one is definitely being added :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great game! I really like the idea of laminating the board. That way I can customize the the problems to challenge all of my students. Thanks for the great idea.
ReplyDeletehttp://learningisthegame.blogspot.com/