Who's Counting Math Game

 

Who’s Counting is all about computing.  It’s a fun game to practice math facts and learn about the language of math.  The object of the game is to accumulate the most points through creating math equations.  Each player gets 7 cards and must use them to come up with math equations.  Multiple operations garner more points. Even keeping score is an exercise in computing.  First you write down your equation, add your bonus points and special cards, then you get a total.  Ordinarily, this exercise might elicit a moan or a groan.  But since it's keeping score and inching the player closer to a winning score, it's good, old-fashioned competitive fun.  Everyone gets to keep a score card too!

I’ll admit, when I tried out the game with a group of students, we were all a bit confused.  The directions are endless.  A video of a group of children playing the game with all the possible scenarios of the rules would have been very helpful.  Otherwise, you can lose the interest of the children rather quickly.  So I searched around on the website and found a video to thoroughly familiarize myself with the rules beforehand.  Still, it was a lot to remember.

The object of the game is to score the highest points making equations with playing cards.  Equations utilizing multiple operations earn more points.  As the title might suggest, a player who ends up with special cards, gets to perform additional operations, such as the doubles cards which doubles your points.  Attaining a high score is a real incentive to get your math correct.

To encourage my little guy, I had my older son and husband play the game with us.  The game appeals to varying levels of math students, and encourages children to employ multiple operations in their expressions to earn the highest points.  After playing the game many times, LionHeart, who loves card games, knew all of the operation symbols. LionHeart can sniff out "school" work like a blood hound, but found this game to be challenging, yet fun.

 

Before we started the game, I made sure to read The Whozit Story so that the children understood the importance of making sure math calculations are correct.  In the story that goes along with the game, a miscalculation is what began a whole series of issues for  the Whozits family.  Now they must be saved from the Green Goo.  My creative child loved this challenge.

The Who’s Counting game reinforces math skills that only get better with lots of repetition. Mental math, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and strategy skills all get a workout with this game.

This is a great game to pull out during the holiday season to keep math skills fresh.