Playing elementary math games should make learning math fun. The perception that math is a chore makes kids develop a relationship with math that doesn’t serve them later in life. When kids have success with things they are far more likely to continue with a positive attitude of themselves.
Math is a very natural thing that is used in everyday life, it is essential to have a good foundation established in your early years and parents play an important and supportive role in the opinions carried forward about math and the ability to learn and understand. It seems like some kids are wired for it and other are better at other disciplines like artist stuff. lots of the math types don’t have a hope when it comes to artist stuff.
It matters not how hard what you set out to do in life is, it is practice of that endeavor that sets you on the road to mastery.
One trick or learning aid that seems to impact kids who are having comprehension problems is using money. I have never met a kid who isn’t interested in money.
When we engage kids in fun play using math outcomes as the means to advance in the game, they will learn math while they don’t even realize they are building new math skills.
There is a new kid on the block when it comes to math games. It is a game that was designed to teach kids financial literacy, but quite by accident uses a majority of the math principles taught in in grade 5 math and grade 6 math. As well, it is good practice for those kids who are beyond grade 6 math games and have a weak foundation.
This game will challenge them, they are learning math at the same time as they are learning about how money works, like in financing enterprises, another skill not taught in school. Before they learn about money, they will have to do a 5th grade math problem or two. Fortunately, this game starts out there. We are going to see decimals in action, but not like in grade 5. These are going to have bigger numbers, just to push the envelope. Then we will learn how to read the playing board, which is a series of interrelated sets and subsets of the properties that make up the game. We learn how to make change with larger sums rather than pocket change. We will learn some percents for the bond interest and we will learn how to add up a sum of different payment streams. And mom and dad can have a direct hand in going above and beyond. And help prepare their kids for things not taught in school.
When I was a kid I wanted someone to teach me about money, but my parents didn’t know. So when I became an accountant, I set out to make a game that would be fun to play, about money, and it turned into a thing to teach kids about money and now math. Well, forty years later, I have distilled finance down to grade 6 math. In my working life, another life time away, I dealt with people about money, systems design and taxes. It is outrageous how little people understand about money, and I have observed that the sooner you learn about money the greater the chance you will have a better standard of living. I have talked with teachers who have said that when meeting former students, that lots of the students said I wish you would have taught us more about money. We only teach kids how the count it. And other programs teach how to save it, and how to pay back debt and how to manage it. Its all good, but who actually tries to explain some of the forms money takes, and apply it so you can feel it.
Do you know that what we call money, cash, bank accounts, mortgages only represents 3% of money, the remaining 97% is electronic, we never see it. We see the crumbs from the table, the banquet is all controlled by math.
The game is meant to be a fantasy where you as a player have to grow your cash, and in the end you have to takeover a corporation that trades on a stock exchange, so that money becomes your weapon. Corporate war games where soldiers of the fortune are lawyers, accountants, brokers, and investment bankers. Using economics for dummies as their guide is not their style.
Every roll of the dice is like a new 6th grade math problem is generated for them to solve, or have mom and dad help out. The game uses a monopoly format because everyone immediately knows the play style, (roll and move with player interaction on the spaces) and is designed so that parents can play with their kids and be fully engaged. The kids can play at the lowest comprehension level and complete the game, where no player is eliminated. All levels of sophistication can play simultaneously, just like the real markets, as the kids learn from the vets – a great family game for game night.
My daughter just completed grade 6 last year. Before that, the game served as one of her 5th grade math games, where we dealt with the relationships in all the set and the subsets of things and their intersections and the combinations that make up the code that is the board. They are learning how to read a mathmatic message made up of grade 5 math outcomes.
We don’t start out talking about corporations and all the paper they hang on the public. We start with an analogy, instead of saying there are four companies that trade, we say there are four pizzas and you can buy and sell bites of pizza, the shares of the company. And for the 6 businesses that each company owns we say they each have 6 toppings. And so on, until they start calling them by their intended terms and the lights go on. We will talk about the pizza analogy in another forum.
You’ve distracted them with financial literacy and sold them math. Kids will get to see that math is used a lot in life, and to keep track of what everybody watches, the almighty dollar.
Watch for us, my daughter and I, were we’ll play and show you how things work, and maybe even do a little math.
Oh, I forgot, it’s called Big Board Raiders and I’m the creator and publisher.
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Morgan’s Grade 7 school photo.