Tiny Polka Dot - Make Your Own Cards!
Players: 1-4
Ages: 3 and up (various games for various age levels)
Purchase: Buy on Amazon - affiliate link
Math Ideas: Subitizing, equivalence, multiple representations, addition
Questions to Ask:
Which cards match? Why?
How should we design cards of our own?
As I mentioned yesterday, this week is Math for Love week here at Games for Young Minds
Yesterday, I shared Prime Climb, one of my favorite board games for older elementary kids (and teenagers and adults, too!). Today, I'm going to share a different game that is ideally suited for early childhood and young elementary kid:
Tiny Polka Dot.
What is Tiny Polka Dot?
I've written about Tiny Polka Dot in the past, and I even made a video to introduce you to the game. You can check it out below.
Essentially, Tiny Polka Dot is a deck of cards that has been designed to help young kids learn about the relationships between numbers. Instead of four suits, the cards come with six distinct ways of representing the numbers from 0-10. You don't have to remove the face cards or pretend that Aces are 1s. The cards are perfectly designed for early math games.
These representations really help kids make connections between different ways that a number can present itself. Suddenly a simple matching game becomes more intriguing as your pre-schooler has to find two different ways to represent 7. Or maybe your 1st grader has to find two cards that add to 10, but one is shown as a numeral and the other is arranged as dots along a circle!
If you're still not sure, check out the video below. Then keep reading to see how you can make a set of Tiny Polka Dot cards at home!
Make Your Own Tiny Polka Dot Cards
A few months ago, I saw a fantastic idea from Paula Krieg, a teacher and artist that I love to follow on Twitter.
Paula was working with five-year-olds, and she also didn't want to have to pretend that Aces were 1s either. So she got her kids to make their own playing cards!
To do this, I'd recommend using some heavy cardstock or poster-board, cut into squares or rectangles. I wouldn't try to get them as small as normal playing cards - bigger pieces are better for smaller hands.
You and your kids can divvy up the work, each making a "suit" of cards that represents the numbers from 0-10 in a different way. You can use the representations that you see in the Tiny Polka Dot cards, or you can come up with your own!
The simple act of making this deck of cards is a meaningful, and fun, mathematical experience for a pre-schooler or K-2 kiddo. They'll do so much counting, comparing, subitizing, and attending to precision, they'll be exhausted! Ok, not really. Nothing exhausts them. But it's worth a try!
Now that we have our cards made, we can focus tomorrow's newsletter all around the fun games you can play with these cards, regardless of what age kids you have. I have a bunch of great ideas to share...