Fraction Jenga War

Yesterday I cruising the "Interwebs" and I came across this post from Math Coach's Corner about working with fractions and making them fun. 

I took a look at the Fraction War and thought, "This would be a great activity to do with my kids at the Boys and Girls Club."  I printed off the fraction cards and was all set and then I found my old Jenga game. 

I thought, "Maybe I could combine the two in some way to make this fun and exciting as well as educational." 

So, I set up the Jenga game as usual and placed the fraction cards in the center of the table. I posted the following on the board: 

Fraction Jenga War

1. Pass out cards to all players.

2. Play a card from your hand without looking.

3. Player with the largest fraction wins. 

4. Winner then picks Jenga piece. 

I picked up the students and explained the rules to them. Immediately, I was met with resistance: "This is going to be boring!", one of them exclaimed. 

I asked them how would they know unless they tried. 

Reluctantly we began to play. They had a blast! 

They were so engaged with the game and learning about fractional relationships! We will revisiting this activity again!  

Thanks to the Math Coach!  

Tutoring Session Success!

Yesterday was a better day with my tutoring kids at the Boys and Girls Club! I found this game online through Teachers Pay Teachers called "Snowball!" and I decided to play it with them. They had a blast and it gave me a chance to see what they knew and did not as far as their computations skills.

A brief summary of the game: You have three dice and you can choose the level of difficulty to challenge your students. There are 3 different levels:

 Snowball 100 requires students to roll 2 dice and add the totals until they reach 100. The “twist”? If they roll doubles, they need to SUBTRACT that amount.

Snowball 200 requires students to roll 3 dice and add the totals until they reach 200. The “twist”? If they roll “3 in a row”, they have to dthe total
(ex. 3,4,5 or 1,2,3)

Snowball 300 requires students to roll 3 dice, add two, and multiply by the third until they reach 300. The “twist”? If they roll “3 in a row”, they have to subtract the total
(ex. 3,4,5 or 1,2,3)

I chose to do the Snowball 300 and the students had a blast! Throughout the game, I got a chance to test their multiply skills, their addition and subtraction skills and their understanding of positive and negative integers. I will definitely be playing this game again!