Using 21st Century Skills To Create Our Own Math Games, a 3D Shape Challenge, and More

The kids really enjoyed the math challenges that I set out for them! Here are a few!  One challenge was to use the their creative thinking skills and the materials shown below to create a math game! They were very creative! As they played the games with each other, they were learning and practicing patience, taking turns, collaboration and problem solving. They used speaking and listening skills as they taught the class how to play their games. 

One friend came up with the idea below. You roll the dice and put that many beads on the ten frame. Your partner does the same. Whoever fills up both of their ten frames first wins. This game helps kids with subitizing (saying how many without counting), and using ten frames. Since there are two, the ten frames show that teens are a group of ten and some extra ones, and twenty is two groups of tens.

Below a friend came up with the idea of rolling the dice and putting that many beads in your side of the balance scale. Whoever has the heavier side at the end of the game wins. This works on subitizing and comparing weight. 

Here, each player picks a row. You take turns rolling the dice and move that many beads over. Whoever gets all of their beads to the other side first wins! This helps them learn subitizing, and shows different ways of making ten on he abicus.  

Here is a game where you collaborate. You each roll the dice and put that many hexagons on top of each other, creating a tower. If you make it fall, the other wins. 

Here a friend used connecting cubes to create a game board. You roll the dice and move that many spaces on the game board. Whoever gets to the end wins! There were so many more that I did not get pictures of. Some made game boards out of blocks or on paper also. All of these games also help with one to one correspondence when counting.

There has been a big interest in three dementional shapes. They need to be able to name them and describe the attributes of thhe shapes. I set up the invitation below for them to create both 2D and 3D shapes using marshmallows and toothpicks. They loved this! They also had to try their best to draw and label their shape. 

They glued a label onto their shape that had their name and the shapes name. 

Here are some of the literacy explorations I had set up as well.  This challenge is called Stack It. You build a castle with these sight word cups, but you can not use the cup unless you could read the sight word on it. 

Build sight words on the pipe cleaners and record them. 

Time how fast you can read the sight words. You can't put them in your pile unless you can read them. Count how many you could read in that amount of time. 

Pick a tile. If you can read the word, put it in one pile. If you can't, put it in another pile. See which pile is bigger. 

Be a detective and see if you can read the teeny tiny sight words with the magnifying glass. Record the words you can find. 

Pick a picture. How many syllables does it have? Put that many cubes on the picture. 

There are more but I did not get pictures. The kids work on math or literacy goals of their choosing while I work with small groups. They look in their data folders where all of their goals are, decide what they want to work on, then find the materials in the room to help them work on that goal. These are also always available during our Thinking, Learning, and Discovering Time for the kids to choose.