January 22, 2020

Hello Families,

This Friday, January 24 is TWIN DAY! Students are coordinating similar outfits to dress as twins/triplets/quadruplets.. etc on Friday! Please do not feel the need to buy anything new, all kiddos have been encouraged to find clothing that is generic enough that it can pass off as similar. Of course, participation is always optional.

We also learned a new game last week to join the home math games! This game practices basic fast facts and mental math for addition and subtraction. Here is how to play:

Shut the Box

Materials:
Deck of cards
Two dice
Score keeping sheet

Steps:
1. Place one row of cards face up from Ace (1) to Queen (12)
2. Player 1 rolls both die and chooses either the sum (addition) or difference (subtraction), for example, if a 3 and 5 are rolled, the answer could either be 8 or 2
3. Player 1 chooses which card they would like to flip, from the example above it would be either the 8 or the 2 ** hint -- try to cover the higher numbers first as they are worth a lot of points
4. Player 1 gets to keep rolling and taking turns until they have covered as many numbers as they can, once they take a turn and there is nothing left to flip (the sum and difference have already been flipped) that players turn is over
    -- If you'd like you can play that both players get ONE bonus roll after they get stuck :)
5. Total up Player 1's score - we talked about strategies for effective score keeping such as making 10's
6. Flip all cards back over and now it's Player 2's turn to try and get a lower score than Player 1

Different Levels for Scorekeeping:
The goal is to get the lowest score possible, as scoring a 0 means you were able to flip all cards over on your turn! You can choose to play with tallies where the winner gets a tally mark or to keep track of the score using running addition, and play to a certain number of points (ie. 50, 100). If you're keeping track of points to practice addition this is a grade two curriculum outcome! :)

This game is super fun and tricky at the beginning! It's a great one to add to your home practice as mental math is an essential building block for understanding! :)

Take care,
Lindsay Brown