Playing Too Many Monkeys

We used to play the game Too Many Monkeys a lot, and we still play it sometimes. This was a great game when Parker was still learning to count forwards and backwards.

In the game you put six cards face down in front of you. You take turns drawing cards, and if you draw a one you would put it face up in the first position in your row of six cards. A five would go in your fifth position, and so on. The goal is to get all six of your cards face up (there are some other cards, like lose a turn, and a few other rules, but that's the jist of it).

A partially completed hand of Too Many Monkeys

This was good for Parker's understanding of number (at least for the numbers 1-6): It requires counting over and over to find where a card goes. Moreover, it can build flexibility because once some cards are up a kid may (eventually) start counting from a number besides one and they may (eventually) work backwards (like going down from six to place the five). If your kid isn't doing these things on their own yet, don't worry—let them go at their own pace.

Why does this matter?

Building a mental number line is an important foundation to understanding number. It is critical that children can move forwards and backwards starting at any number. I'll talk more about this at some point in the future, but children are actually quite good at inventing their own strategies for solving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems (and other types of problems). Common child-invented strategies for addition and subtraction often involve counting forwards or backwards starting at different numbers, and this requires a flexible understanding of the number line.

Next time

Next time I'll talk about a "challenge" I recently gave Parker with this game.

In the future I'll talk about other games and how they can build math understanding.

Question (Post a Comment!)

What games do you like to play with kids? What math ideas do you see in these games?

#Games #Number