This activity provides students with opportunities to practice addition strategies and explore probability in this adaptation of the classic probability game Greedy Pig. To play, you will need a 6-sided dice, a number chart, and a brown counter to represent the mouse, and a yellow counter to represent the cheese. The game is suitable for two or…

In this article, the author describes how to help develop students' conceptual understanding of fractions through the tactical card-based game Nearest to One. Nearest to One promotes number-sense based strategies for comparing fractions, such as benchmarking (e.g., Is the fraction greater or less than one-half?) and building to the next whole,…

Regular contributors James and Toby Russo return with a sixth principle for educationally-rich mathematical games--almost all mathematical games have the potential to be transformed into an investigation. This article builds on their earlier piece with Leicha A Bragg (APMC 23(3), 30-34). [For "Five Principles of Educationally Rich…

Estimation is such an important yet sometimes overlooked skill. Enhancing estimation skills through exposing students to enumeration ('how many') problems where they are required to estimate before calculating is a critical aspect of developing number sense (Reys et al., 2012). This article describes a 'how many' problem undertaken with a small…

Mathematical games are widely used in the primary classroom; however, not all games are equally valuable. How might teachers decide which specific games to introduce? The authors present five principles of educationally-rich games to help teachers address this issue. In so doing, they provide teachers with a usable framework to stimulate…

Using a game-based context and concentrating explicitly on language, students in the early years are able to make sense about place value amid the vagaries of the English language in naming numbers. This conceptual approach to understanding place value allows students to further develop number strategies beyond counting by ones.

The Smarties-Box Challenge encourages students to apply several different mathematical capabilities and concepts--such as, estimation, multiplication, and the notion of being systematic--to solve a complex, multistep problem. To effectively engage in the Smarties-Box Challenge, students are required to demonstrate aspects of all four proficiency…