Magical Moments in Kindergarten!

😊 Welcome to your first Kindergarten-at-home blog post! 😊

As you know, we will be starting our routine of sending weekly math activities and lessons home to you next Monday. In the meantime, I thought it would be nice for you to have a fun math game to play this week.

This game is called Lucky Number, Genius Edition! Our kindergarten kiddos are familiar with this game and they love to play it. This is a cooperative game that can be played either with a partner or alone.

This game will help your child learn and practice the following skills:

subitizing, or recognizing at a glance, dots on a dice
counting on from one number
using a number line
number sense to 12
early addition skills
printing numbers with correct formation and direction

For this game you will need:

two dice
a pencil and an eraser OR dry erase pen
if you have a clear sheet protector somewhere in your house pull it out and use it to put the print out below inside. Then your child can use a dry erase marker on this and when finished can erase it with a kleenex or cloth and then the game can be used over and over again.
a print out of the game, or you can draw out a game board pretty easily by copying the one in the link below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TaPh8kodgd2Zdpa8S3UhpbdNm1MS_qSQ/view?usp=sharing

Here's how to play:

your child rolls the two dice
your child should figure out the total of the two dice using one of these strategies:

state which dice is showing the higher amount and then count on from that number to get the new total ("this dice is 6, and this dice is 3, so 6...7, 8, 9)
use the numbers on the bottom of the sheet as a number line to count on from the larger number
for those that are ready, use mental math to add the numbers together

write the number of the total of the two dice in the square directly above that number. Watch to be sure your child is printing their numbers with correct formation:

your child should be holding their pencil correctly with the pincer (3 finger) grasp
we always start printing letters and numbers from the top and work down

the next person rolls the dice and repeats the steps above
the first number to get to the top is the Lucky Number and the winner (the number is the winner, not the person!)

I played Lucky Number with my son today and he insisted on continuing to play until all the numbers reached the top! At the top of the sheet he wrote which number got first place, second place, third place...all the way to 11th place! You don't need to do this unless your child wants to, but it may be a good idea to at least get 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners!

This game can also open up some good discussion about probability! You can point out to your child that 2 has less chances of winning than 7...talk about why! 2 can only be made up of 1 and 1, giving the dice only one way to make 2, however 7 can be made up of 4 and 3, or 5 and 2 or 6 and 1, giving the dice many more ways and chances to make 7. Also, you can discuss why there is no number 1 on the sheet (you can't make 1 when using two dice).

Here we are playing Lucky Number at our house yesterday: