After (un)officially taking this past week off, toward the end of the week I realized that we took it really, really easy in the intentional learning department. Before leaving for the sprinklers on Friday, I decided to sketch out a gameboard that I could recreate on the floor of the park. I lost the little draft, which had some well placed numbers. It didn’t matter much-we still had fun.

The object of the game is to jump on as many squares as you need, adding on smaller quantities to make 20.  Now, you might be thinking, “Hey, you want me to play this with a Kindergarten kid?”  My response is, “Yep, sure do.”  Here’s why-it’s not meant to be easy.  It’s not meant to be for extra making 10 practice.  It might be practice for a 2nd/3rd grader, which is also good.
My goals here are to have G to:

• become more fluent with using the making 5s facts;
• understand the really small quantities (building blocks) that can make up 5s and 10s;
• use the make ten facts that she knows (she hasn’t learned how useful they can be yet!);
• think of 20 in different ways (four 5s, or two 10s, or two 5s and two tens); and,
• to develop strategies to keep track of the jumps (here’s where thinking in 5s and 10s is useful!).

We played a few times.

I went first.  After my turn, she wrote what I did, just because she wanted to.

As predicted, keeping track during her turn was tricky.  As first G started with 1s and 2s and got lost in what she was up to so she started over.  She asked me if I could keep track on the side, so I did this time only.  Here’s how it went down.

She jumped on 2, then 4.  Said, “That’s 6.” Oh, I can jump on another 4!” She hopped over to a 4.

I restated what I saw as I wrote, “So you jumped on 2 and then 4.  That got you to 6, then you saw a 4 and jumped all the way over there!  Why did you want to land on a 4?”

“Cause then I’d get a 10.”

“Hmmm, that’s cool, you can use your make ten facts? Whoa.”

So far I had written:

2 + 4 + 4

Then I said, “So this altogether makes 10?” I wrote parentheses around the expression as I say that.

(2+4+4)

She kept going. She added on as she jumped around.  2. “That’s 12.” 3 “That’ll get me 15.” After much deliberation, she jumped on the 5, seemingly taking the easy way out by then. “A 5 will get me 20.  Write that down!”

I wrote with her, saying that I couldn’t quite remember what she had jumped on.  She remembered, 2 and 3 got me another 5 and then I did a last jump of 5.  So 10 and 10 make 20.”

Yes!  Mission complete.  Now we can play again-I might rearrange the numbers a bit next time, but this was quite effortless and successful!Read More »