A math game to try...

Instead of doing a regular math lesson on Friday, I dug this game out to play with Warren and Emily.  The older girls and I had made it together years ago.  It's simple to play and great for practicing addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  We made a game board out of a square piece of cardboard.  The we divided it into 36 squares and wrote the numbers in as you see them on the picture:

 

We made 36 playing chips in three colours, 12 of each colour.  To play you need three dice.  In turn, each player rolls all three dice, then uses the numbers on them to add, subtract, multiply and/or divide to come to a final answer.  For example with 2, 4, and 5 you could do 2+4=6,x5=30 or 2x5=10, +4=14 or whatever other combination you want.  The player then places one of his/her coloured chips on that number. Then the next player takes a turn and so on until all the numbers are covered.  This is simple at the beginning when there are few numbers covered, but gets more challenging as the game progresses.  If a player is unable to come to an answer that is still open on the board, play passes to the next player. First player to use up all his/her chips wins. You could add a challenge to the game by awarding points for a player forming rows of his own colour.

A glorious sunset:

Today we went to visit Gerald's mom. For a while the kids kept busy playing games and doing puzzles.

Then Gerald took them outside for a game of hockey in the parking lot.  I took this picture from the balcony, through some tree branches.  Brent (bottom right) was doing his own thing  until Gerald told him, "Brent, we're playing hockey, not Bonanza."

Meanwhile, I stayed inside to try to get Miss Nadia to have a nap. I wasn't successful, but at least I was warm. :)