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File Folder Games (make your own)
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Printable File Folder Games
If you can find Ruth Beechick's little book, _An Easy Start in
Arithmetic_, I've found it very helpful and encouraging.
You can buy it individually:
Or you can buy the three volume set of booklets called The Three Rs, which includes the arithmetic book and also A Strong Start in Language, and a short booklet on teaching reading:
Miquon math is a good program, but very teacher intensive, and you really ought to have the Lab Sheet Annotations AND the First Grade Diary to do this well. The First Grade Diary alone has lots of fun number games and ideas.
Many times we move on in math too quickly when our children just need more time working with real things before moving to symbols.
At times I have temporarily put the mathbooks and worksheets aside, just to spend time working on getting down some basic comfort skills with numbers. I think this takes a lot of working with real things, manipulatives, and games, and it's important to get this down before worksheet drills. Here are some of the things we've done:
Dominoes: We get out the dominoes and match the ends. We don't worry about score keeping or anything else- just match a number in your pile to a number at the end of the domino row on the table. This helps them learn number patterns. Later, we play a kind of slap jack
game. When I think they recognize the patterns well, I lay the
dominoes face down, turn one over, and the first one to call out the number and slap his/her hand down over it gets to keep the
domino.
Cup of Twenty- I do not know why, but my two littlest thought this
was a really fun game. I give them each a cup with twenty small
counters in it. It can be beads, dried beans, dry macaroni, poker
chips, those flat glass discs that we put in fish bowls or vases (they look like flattened marbles)- whatever. I think it's neat to vary the objects, and sometimes use something really special- small sea shells, pieces of jewelry if you own that many, sparkly rocks, etc.
I give them a regular set of dice from a game, one with the number dots for 1-6. They each get one. They take turns rolling, telling me what they rolled (this, again, helps with the recognition of dot patterns from 1-6), and then they remove that many counters from their cup. The first one to zero wins. As they play, I will sometimes ask questions about who has the most, who has the least, how many counters they have left, how many counters they have removed all together, etc. Once all the counters are out of the cup, they roll to return counters to the cup- same thing- an occasional question about who has more, who can win with just one roll, how many all together from the last roll and this one. Again, they just adore this 'game.'
What's in my hand? We have cuisenaire rods. YOu could do this with
any set of manipulatives that have some sort of 1-10 rod system.
To begin with, I had them make the stair steps (one through ten in a row), close their eyes, and then I removed a rod, closed the stairs, and they had to guess what I was holding.
Next I took our Cuisenaire box, which has slots for each separate
color, and I wrote the numbers above the right color. My kids could refer to that for help. Then I took a fist full of rods and put them in a bag. I would pull out one rod, keeping it out of their sight, and give them a clue, and they would have to guess. If I had a six, I might say one of the following:
The rod in my hand is bigger than five, smaller than seven.
The rod in my hand is in between five and seven.
The rod in my hand is more than five, less than seven.
The rod in my hand is longer than five, shorter than seven.
I used these different sentences throughout the game because I
discovered that one of my children had somehow not realized
what 'in between' meant in relation to numbers.
Once she got comfortable (and quick) at answering these questions, I started to say things like:
The rod in my hand is half of an eight.
The rod in my hand is one more than seven.
The rod in my hand is one less than four.
The rod in my hand plus a one makes a nine.
The next step up in clues worked like this:
The rod in my hand is two more than six.
The rod in my hand plus a three equals a seven.
If I had two of these rods, it would make a four.
The rod in my hand is two less than seven.
The rod in my hand is as big as a seven and three put together.
For all of these questions, they are allowed to refer to the box, to get out the rods and work out the answers. When they don't need the rods, we move on a bit.
How Many Rods To Ten?
I ask them to show me all the ways they can add two rods to
get to a ten, all the ways they can add two rods to get to a seven, and so forth.
The Math Puzzle Game
When he was five, my son had a Lauri number puzzle 1-10. There are ten small puzzle boards, one for each number. One of the
puzzle pieces in each board is the number, and then for the number
one, there is one apple, for the number two, there are two pears,
for the number 7, we have seven small trees (or whatever, you get
the idea).
We used the pieces to this puzzle because they are small and do not roll around, and because while one of my children is working on one task, the younger child can be putting together a different
part of the puzzle.
I really like this puzzle set. However, anything you have could be used in a similar way- felt pieces, beans again, pictures cut out from a magazine, jewelry, magnets.
Here's how we use the puzzle:
We take a whiteboard and I write down a math sentence, using giant circles intead of numbers. It looks kind of like this:
(_) + (_) =
Suppose we are working on the number six. I take the six form from the puzzle and place it where the sum belongs, and then I give my child the corresponding six small manipulatives.
Her job is to move them around in the circles to show different ways of making six. She writes down each of the math problems she figures out. So she'll put two manipulatives in one circles, four in the second, and then write down 2 + 4 + 6. I did this with her oldest sister lo, these many years ago (1988), only we sat at the table and used paper plates for circles, and poker chips for manipulatives. Sometimes we used snacks for the manipulatives and practiced subtraction by eating them.
Other math manipulatives:
A set of cards
TAke out a set for numbers one through ten. Have the kids put them
in order from the smallest number to the largest. When they are good at this, have them put them in order backwards. Later give them some random numbers- not consecutive. Say, a two, a five, a nine and a ten. Ask them to put the cards in order from smallest to largest.
Lay out ten cards from one to ten, and give the child a bag of beans and have them put one bean over each spot on each card.
Play War- a great way to learn less than/more than
Play Go Fish- only ask for pairs of cards that add up to ten, or
six, or whatever. Give her a set of small counters to work out the
combinations she needs in concrete objects first.
Board games like Sorry- the older Sorry which involved rolling the
dice. Games like this help them learn counting carefully (one to
one correspondence), number patterns (on the dice), adding two dice together, and strategy.
Money- count the coins in your purse, sort them by size and color,
learn their denominations, count nickles by fives, dimes by tens.
Counting real things- In addition to the usual counting of fingers, toes, groceries, apples, peas we have to eat, also take advantage of things that come in natural groups and use these for skip counting. Eggs in the egg carton get counted by twos, so do matched socks, eyes in the room, shoes, the number feet our family has under the table. Count fingers and toes by fives and tens, and count by fours using dog legs.
Books- when you are reading, any time a number is mentioned (Ma gave Laura two pancakes, for instance), ask questions like, "How many would Laura have if Ma gave her two more? How many will Laura have left when she eats one? At the store, count onions into a bag, asking how many more, how many less, you will have if you add three, take three out, and so forth.
Once activities like this have become easy and fairly quick, then
add some number sentences- as you are playing 'What's in my hand,'
take a moment to show her on a whiteboard that you could write out
the answers in two ways. You could write, "The green rod and a red
rod make a train as long as a six rod." Or you could simply write
it with numbers: 4+2=6
First get the concrete stuff down, then add the number sentences to the concrete stuff she already knows and feels comfortable with.
Once they've gotten good at games like 'what's in my hand,' most
kids can quickly see that the sense in having the symbols for 'and
this many more' (+); is the same as (=).
There are also some fun math games on the computer. If we were
using these, I would also leave out counters for the child to use.
In fact, sometimes I've given my kids manipulatives to use while
doing their worksheets.
A wise hsing mom once told me that if you start with manipulatives, they tend to resort to those external manipulatives more than their fingers. This is good, because it takes more time to count things out with external manipulatives, so that it is naturally a self- reducing activity. Kids will only use the manipulatives as long as they have to have them, and because it is tedious to count out five beans, and then four beans, and then count them all together, eventually they will remember their math facts and stop needing the extra assistance.
It's also helpful to learn to count to 20 in a language such as Japanese, where the numbers passed ten are literally "Ten and 1; Ten and two; Ten and three; Ten and four..."
In Spanish they begin the 'Ten and..." counting at 16.
Here are some more ideas gleaned from a friend of mine:
To learn patterns, take your child out in the garden and open up numerous peas. count number of peas and record (Mom) - eventually you WILL see a pattern. Nature is full of patterns.
Estimating:
Think about how many times you estimate during the day. Estimating
is a daily used skill. Have your child estimate (then count of
course) anything! Estimate and then count livestock on farms you pass, apples in a bag- Look for things in daily life- how many steps across the living room, how many body lengths is the driveway, how many hops to the car.
Then of course do it! You get the idea.
A version of NIM ( if you have the excellent book Family Math, you will be familiar with NIM)
Two players. You take turns counting and can either "say" one number or two. Object is to be the
"one" to "say" 21. So if the first player says "one;" player two can say "two" or "two, three". Mom must understand the pattern for this to work, b/c she can manipulate and win every time. My children were champing at the bit to "beat Mom". Once you understand the pattern it doesn't matter who starts. This game is loads of fun b/c children are convinced that the one
who starts is the one who wins! Don't "tell" them the secret- let
them play till they see it.
You can also use books to teach math concepts or at least to help children be a little more receptive to them. Books for younger children are easy to find;counting books abound. Books for older children can be a little harder to find. Here are some we have used at our house:
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