How can summer holidays be made more fun with a little bit
of educational games and a lot of playtime in the backyard? Involve your
10-year olds in these fun, outdoor 1st
grade math games and have a blast with addition, skip counting, back
counting, and number word reading.
The Game of Mother Lion and Her Cub
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| Photo Courtesy: Amanda Westmont |
In first grade, your child should be familiar with skip
counting, back counting, and number line. However, when the kids are back to
school after their holiday, teachers would expect them to not only skip and
back count but ‘read’ number words too. Here are some exciting backyard 1st
grade math games that you can play with the kids on a sunny day!
Mother Lion
Cut 10 6x6” squares from a construction paper. You can
choose to have 10 different colors of construction paper to make the math game
as colorful as possible! Write a digit each on one side of the squares and
their corresponding number words on the other side.
Have the kids stand in a row while you stand a few feet away
from them with the squares. Make sure the distance is such that the kids are
neither too close to you nor too far to see the number cards that you’ll hold
up.
You will be the mother lion while the kids will play the
part of hungry cubs. They’ll begin the game by asking you “Mother lion, mother
lion, what time is it?” and you’ll display the word number side of any number
card indicating the time. If you display ‘four’, the kids will have to take
four steps toward you. Once they take the steps, you will pretend to fall asleep,
ignoring the hungry little cubs. They will again wake you up with the same
beginning line and this time you will flash the number side of a random number
card. If you flash ‘6’, the kids will have to go back 6 steps. Alternate
between the number and word sides of the cards and finish the game when a child
reaches your spot.
Math skills learnt – Skip counting, counting backwards, and number
word recognition.
Bowling with a Twist
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| Photo Courtesy: Tinou Bao |
The classic
game of bowling is twisted and tweaked to make it a great outdoor event as
well as an exciting 1st grade math game at home! Gather 10 empty
soda bottles and fill them up with sand to make the game more challenging. Cut
out strips of construction paper and write the numbers 1-10 and paste each
label on a random bottle.
Arrange the bottles on your driveway in a triangle. Right
after the triangle, draw a line with a chalk and mark that as the end of the
alley. Make sure the bottle with the number 10 is right in the front so that it
is the most difficult to send off the alley. Divide the kids into two groups
and toss a coin to choose the group who’ll take the first throw. Get a deuce
ball to start the game. Just like a normal game of bowling, have the kids throw
the ball at the bottles and send off the ‘pins’ off the alley. Have the player
who throws the ball count up the numbers on each pin that gets knocked and write
down his score on the score maintenance sheet. Supervise so that there isn’t
any error in calculating the total.
Play a match of 2 rounds and declare the winner at the end
of it. A great game of bowling and an exciting marathon of addition will keep
the kids happy through the rest of the day!
Math skills learnt – Addition
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