6 Free Addition and Subtraction Games!
Ok, so first the bad news:
Child care here at the Haines household is going to get more complicated for the next week or two. Meanwhile, online teaching at my university is really in full swing. So I don't know that I'll be able to get a newsletter out as often this week.
So I better make this a good one! Below you'll find a bunch of really fun addition and subtraction games for different age bands. I broke them into grade levels, but those designations are somewhat arbitrary. So if the game sounds fun, try it with your kids!
Kindergarten & First Grade
My first recommendation is a game that is always an instant classic with kids - Pig. In this game, each person takes turns rolling the dice and adding the number rolled to their total. You can stop at any point to keep your score, or keep rolling. But watch out - if you roll a 1 you lose all your points that round!
The game is best if played over multiple rounds, where you bank points from each round and try to outscore your opponents. A full description of the games is here at my site.
The other game I'll recommend is one I love so much I made a video about it: Shut the Box. The game is originally played with a physical box, but you can easily play with a pair of dice and pencil and paper.
Write out the numbers from 1-9 on your paper. Roll your dice and find the sum. Then cross off any combination of numbers that makes that sum. So if you roll 11, you could cross of 5 and 6, or 1 and 4 and 6, or 1 and 3 and 7. Once you've used a number, you can't reuse it.
The goal of the game is to cross off all your numbers, at which point you have ":shut the box." Again, a full description is at my site!
Second & Third Grade
If your kids are at this age, they could use some practice with multidigit addition and subtraction.
The first game was one I used constantly as a kid to pass the time: One Dollar Words. Basically, you take a word and convert each of its letters into a number according to its place in the alphabet. So A is 1 cent, B is 2 cents, C is 3 cents, and so on.
You add up all these numbers to find words that have a value of $1.00. These are the fabled "one dollar words," and there are actually more of them than you might expect!
As an extra challenge, you can try to construct funny nonsense words that add to a dollar. A full rundown of the game is here on my site.
The other game is notorious to any of my former students. After all, I am the World Champion. It's called The 100 Game.
In this game for two players, you start with the number 100 written on paper. Each player takes turns subtracting a whole number from 1-10 from the existing amount. If you subtract the total down to 0, you lose the game.
As you might expect, there is a foolproof strategy, and no I'm not going to tell you what it is. You'll just have to explore with your kids to find it!
That exploration, by the way, is the true fun of the game. But along the way, your kid gets to practice a TON of subtraction.
As always, here is a write-up from my site.
Fourth Grade and Up
At this age, you probably don't need a ton of addition and subtraction practice, per se, but there are still a ton of great strategy games that you can play while you freshen your skills!
For example, you could play Aggression! My son and I have recently become obsessed with this strategy game. Essentially, you place "armies" around a map, sort of like in Risk. Then you can attack opposing armies as long as your territory touches your opponents' territory. Whoever has the greatest sum is the winner.
Just as in Risk, the real strategy comes from deciding how to place your armies, and when to attack which neighboring territory. I haven't actually written this game up yet: I got it from my friend Erick on Twitter. But there is a GREAT visual explanation on the site MathPickle. Check it out!
If you're looking for more of a puzzle, you could always try the Magic Square: Draw a 3x3 square grid. Then fill it with the numbers from 1-9. Each row, column, and diagonal must add to the same amount. Oh, and you can only use each number once.
If your kids figure that one out, then tell them to do it with a 4x4 grid and the numbers from 1-16. If they figure out that magic square, well hats off to them! It's far from trivial.
Check out my Magic Square write-up here!
Hope these suggestions can help you and your kids out at home this week! I hope to be back with you as soon as possible. But as we've all learned, there's no telling what tomorrow brings. In any case, talk to you soon, and thanks so much for all the positive feedback I've gotten from Weeks 1 and 2 of this crazy experience. I can't tell you how much it means.