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Washington Parent
Magazine |  |
Family Board Games Build Math
Skills
Julie Tiss, M. Ed.
Among the obvious benefits of sitting down and playing a good
old-fashioned game with your children is the opportunity that games
provide to apply and solidify the mathematical reasoning and calculating
skills your children are learning in school. Perceptual and verbal skills
have both been linked to mathematical achievement levels. That is, math
does not only involve strong number skills. It also involves
visual-perceptual skills, auditory perceptual and verbal skills, as well
as strong logical thinking skills and fine motor skills.
Visual perceptual skills help your child to keep his written
computations organized with aligned columns. They also help him to
differentiate between the symbols, shapes and sizes found in math. They
help him to understand the part-whole concepts needed for fractions, to
and understand sequential concepts (e.g., before and after). Auditory
perceptual and verbal skills help your child to distinguish between
similar sounding numbers (e.g., 13 and 30; 1000 and 1000th), follow
directions, follow oral drills and dictated assignments, count on from
within a sequence, explain why a problem is solved as it is, write numbers
from dictation and comprehend story problems. Abstract and logical
reasoning skills help your child to solve story problems, compare sizes
using symbols, understand number patterns, understand place-value concepts
and apply concepts to symbols. Finally, fine-motor skills are needed for
completing written calculations and manipulating concrete
materials.
Up until children are 6 years old, their primary way of learning about
the world is through their senses. Between 2 and 6 years they are laying
the foundation skills needed for learning mathematical concepts. These
include understanding concepts such as more- or less-than, before and
after, categorizing, making sets, finding pairs and making one-to-one
correspondence, sequencing, identifying parts of a whole, understanding
cause-effect relationships, recognizing patterns, rote counting skills,
and recognizing numbers. Games that help build the concepts of more or
less-than include Don't Spill the Beans and Lucky Ducks.
Games such as Candy Land and Shoots and Ladders help to
build the concepts of "before" and "after". Concepts that include balance,
cause-effect, making predictions, logical and visual reasoning and fine
motor skills include Don't Spill the Beans, Spaghetti Game
and Don't Break the Ice. Lucky Ducks and Potato Head
are two more games that build fine motor skills, as well as one-to-one
correspondence, part-whole concepts, matching, and memory. Higher level
skills such as memory, concentration, attention, identifying sets, number
identification and recognition of dot patterns of numbers can be
solidified by playing games such as Bingo, The Memory Game
and Cootie. Finally, rote counting skills can easily be
incorporated into all of these games by parents.
Starting around 6 years, children begin to attach meaning to the
numbers they have previously learned by rote. For example, 7 is 1 more
than 6, not just the number that comes after 6 when you are counting
aloud. They can use objects and manipulatives to understand mathematical
concepts and numbers. From the ages of 4 to 11 children need objects in
the physical world to learn about abstract mathematical concepts. Their
memory for math facts can be reinforced in any game by incorporating the
rule of answering one to three flash cards correctly before taking a turn.
Games such as Chinese Checkers, Checkers, Connect Four and
Battleship all build the visual perceptual organization skills
needed to read and build charts and graphs and to align columns in long
mathematical problems. Planning, cause-effect, and logical reasoning
skills are also addressed by those games as well as games such as Clue
Junior and Guess Who. Card games, including games like
Uno, and any card tricks, build sequencing, memory and number
pattern recognition, as well as mental computation skills such as addition
and skip counting. Dominos is another good game to build visual
memory for number patterns, as well as fine motor skills. Games such as
Monopoly Junior begin to build basic money skills and doubling
skills, while games such as Clue Junior and Guess Who build
the problem-solving skills that will become increasingly important as your
child progresses through his school math classes.
Starting around 11 to 12 years, children begin to reason and think
about numbers and concepts at the abstract level. The games children this
age can play become significantly more complicated, and the games'
connections to math skills become more obvious. However children continue
to benefit from the multisensory, interactive and experiential nature of
the game format for learning well into their young adult years. Reading
large numbers and building place-value concepts are skills exercised in
games such as Masterpiece, Careers and Life. It is at
this stage that many games incorporate money skills into their formats.
Careers, Life, Monopoly, Easy Money and Pay
Day incorporate money skills that range from the very basic such as
counting money and determining correct change, to advanced concepts and
skills such as bankruptcy, inflation, taxes, rent, salary, accounting,
bartering and bidding, interest, mortgaging, bills, loans and budgeting.
Many games incorporate higher thinking skills. For instance, games like
Masterpiece, Careers, Monopoly, Life,
Clue, Backgammon, and particularly Master Mind all
exercise logical and deductive reasoning, predicting and planning, problem
solving, and visual perceptual and organizational skills. Some of these
games even build higher level math concepts such as fractions, ratios, and
percentages into their formats.
Professional educators disagree about many theories. However, most
educators agree that children learn best by becoming actively engaged in
experiences that allow them to interact and discuss ideas and concepts
with other learners. Games are a great way for parents to provide learning
experiences for their children that are engaging, interactive and most
importantly, fun! Board games are especially good for building
mathematical concepts and skills. They are fun and engage all the senses
(visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and motor). Because learning is a social
process, children learn best through fun activities that involve
interaction with other people, all the senses and the opportunity to act
out concepts using physical representations. There are many commercial
games that offer all of these, making them ideal learning tools. So, go
ahead and turn off your TV and even the computer, and try a good
old-fashioned board game with your kids. A price can not be put on the
quality of the time you will have spent with your children. They will have
fun while learning, and they will remember those times with greater
fondness than the times they spent playing the educational computer games
or watching the educational TV programs.
Julie Tiss is the Director of Tiss' Tutoring and
Testing, a member of WISER and the mother of two. You can reach
her by e-mail at: jtiss@gmu.edu. |
