Shut the Box!

We play a really fun math game at school called Shut the Box!

It is a really easy game to play at home, and your child should be able to teach you how to play. This is a great game for targeting numerous mathematical skills, such as recognizing numbers at a glance and addition and subtraction. Here's an overview of how to play:

To play "Shut the Box", you need 2 dice, and cards 1-12 (they do not need to be the same suit).

Start by laying out the cards in order, face up.
First player rolls both dice.
First player can turn over the card that matches either the sum (+) or difference (-) of the dice.

Most of the grade 1's are just working towards identifying the sum right now, but feel free to gauge the readiness level and include the difference as well!
We are working towards automaticity of basic facts, but our entry strategy for developing these skills is being able to count on (start with the largest number and count on the other dice amount) and count back (start with the largest number and count back the other dice amount).

For example: if 4 and 5 are rolled, the player can turn over 9 (5...6,7,8,9) or 1 (5...4,3,2,1).

The first player continues to roll the dice, turning over cards until they can't turn over any more cards.

The cards that are left showing are the added together and that is the first players score.

The cards are turned back to face up, the dice are now passed to the second player for their turn, following the same process.

The winner is the person with the LOWEST score.

I hope you enjoy this game at home!

Ms. Brown