Traditional Math Games - Connect 4

I was playing Connect 4 the other day with my niece. Our age didn't matter – we both had equal parts of fun and equal parts of brain busting. It is such a simple game, it’s sometimes mind blowing to know just how much critical thinking you can teach or learn from a few pieces of colored coin. It is also a great way to teach counting and math to preschool math learners.

Image Source - http://uncannyflats.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/connect-4.jpg

If you haven’t played the game, the premise of Connect 4 is seemingly simple, with players taking it in turns to drop colored coin like pieces into a vertical grid of 7 columns and 6 rows. The winner is the first player to 'Connect 4' pieces either vertically, diagonally or horizontally. This game is a great leveler for adults to play with children, because the simplicity of the play masks the fact that there are actually 4,531,985,219,092 positions and the fact that the game is one in which very real strategies can be developed. There are many different versions of Connect 4 under guises such as Pop out, Pop 10 and 5 in a row, but the original remains the simplest and the best.12:15

I would recommend you buy a game for the classroom or home for those moments when you need a break but don’t mind having a bit of intellectual activity mixed in.

The Sum of Life – Why Addition Matters

Math has a reputation for being a toughie for various reasons. When it is taught in classrooms with endless drills, it can be viewed more as a struggle than something useful or even something fascinating. When a sense of struggle and restlessness sneaks into learning, kids tend to become resistant to what is being taught.

A great way to ease kids into learning math and especially basic operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division is to establish how useful they are in everyday life. In other words, establishing the context can help kids understand the concept better as opposed to learning the concepts in isolation.

One way of doing this is through online addition games. Why addition games? Simply because games provide context. You can also consider how we use addition in everyday life and to engage kids in activities where they can use this operation. You could say, subtraction is the other side of the coin and hence, any activity that uses addition can also be used to teach subtraction as well.

“Addition” by Kathy Cassidy is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Introducing Addition

Start from the very beginning and introduce addition to kids, the bare facts and nothing but the facts. 

• Addition is an operation that combines two or more values.
• The symbol used is ‘+’, called ‘plus’, and indicates the values before and after the symbol must be combined.
• The values are known as addends.
• Addition can be carried out in a horizontal layout or vertical/stacked layout.

Addition in Everyday Life

Once kids are introduced to the concept, take them through all the ways addition is used in their daily life. Ease kids into it by demonstrating with objects, word problems and then get them to use addition in real life situations. Some simple ways to do it include:

• Shopping – Take kids out for a round of shopping. Ask them to help you add up the total on your bill. In case of younger children, ask them to hand you a box of cereal and then bring two more. You can ask them how many boxes of cereals are there altogether.  

“L'addition” by francois schnell is licensed under CC BY 2.0

• Cooking – Kids can pick up math in the kitchen. Add a spoon of sugar, and then ask your child to add four more, and to write down the total amount of sugar used. The kitchen is also a good place to teach kids about measurements.

• Sports – While watching a game, kids can keep a count of the scores and add them up to see if the sum of scores matches the score shown at the end of their game. 

“Soccer math game” by Shabayek is licensed under CC BY 2.0

• Age – Explain to children how they grow older by a year, that is, a year is added to their existing age. They can try working out their age and other people’s age. Caution: Not to be exercised around age-sensitive folks!

• Time – You could tell them that they can leave the house after ten minutes. Kids will need to use addition to know at what time they can go out to play. 

If you look around you, you will see that addition along with other basic math operations is used in many ways.  By allowing children to make these connections in real life, math will stop being the bitter pill one has to swallow to score grades and will become something more substantial that can be understood and, more importantly, enjoyed.