fact family games

This week we mostly just messed around with some games to support our fact family work, some via Enki Education instructions, some made up on-the-fly because it supported the kids in how they were taking in the information. As I was pulling out the Fact Family verse to post at the beginning of the week, Zoo Boy asked, "What are we doing today?" J whispered, "Subtraction, of course, we did addition with Grandfather's Family last week!" I simply read the verse aloud, and Zoo Boy exclaimed, "Oh, I see, 'going separate ways', that would be subtraction!" Love it, love it, love it....




ANYWAY! I had made up a bunch of these number cards (6 for each number) that correspond to the colors of the cuisinaire rods, as well as a few "+" "-" and "=" cards. The first day I took a 6 card, a 4 card, and a 10 card. I retold, again, the key point from the Grandfather's Family story, picking up the "10" for Grandfather, and the "6" and "4" for the grand kids as I read, laying them on the table, and then adding a "+" card between 6 and 4, and a "=" card before the 10 as above. Then I went on with my story, laying out a 10, and saying "The children stayed with Grandfather and played with him at the carnival for quite awhile. Eventually they became quite hungry. Grandfather asked his granddaughter to run ahead and let Mother know that they would be coming along right away for breakfast." With that, I laid down the "-" card and a 6, then laid down a "=" card and looked at J. He grabbed a 4 card to complete the equation and I said, "That left the grandson to help his grandfather pick up and prepare for breakfast." The I laid another 10 card down and said "After breakfast, Grandfather sent his grandson out to gather some wood so that he could whittle more whistles," and I laid out the "-" and 4 cards. Zoo Boy jumped in and grabbed a "=" and 6 cards, and finished the equation, and I wrapped up the story, "which left the granddaughter to help Grandfather sharpen his knife. When the grandson returned, they were a family together again and they whittled whistles together all morning long." Then I pulled the number cards out of one of the equations and laid them side by side.

That first day I finished by just letting the kids play around with the number cards. They built various families of three, and corresponding equations.


The next day I pulled out a spinner I'd made that corresponded with the card colors and explained the rules of the game. I spun the spinner and came up with a 6, which I picked out of the cards and then added two other cards (of my choice) to make a fact family. The it was J's turn, and he spun a 1, doing the same. Zoo Boy spun a 2, and so on and so forth until we were all out of cards. We played this game two days in a row, the 2nd day I pulled out cards to 25 to increase the options.


For the next couple of days, we played a game the kids have dubbed the "truth" game. I'm not sure if this is the same as any of the Enki games, it's something I thought of while working with the previous day's game. I spun the spinner and got a "6", then I made an equation (6+1=7) from the remaining cards.

J's turn was next. He spun a "10". He then had to put his 10 over my 6, and then make the equation "tell the truth" by changing one of the other cards (either the other number in the equation or the final number). He was also allowed to change the "+" sign to a "-" if he wished -- he did, changing the 7 to a 9 and making the equation "10-1=9".

Then it was Zoo Boy's turn. He spun a "3", and decided to change back to a "+" sign and change the 1 to a 6 to make the equation "tell the truth", 3+6=9. He then declared "number games" to be "the most fun games ever". Hooray for math!! We continued turn taking until no more "truth" could be told by the remaining cards.

More math games next week!