Pickin Math Game

We have made our version of the Pickin math game we found in the excellent book Montessori Play and Learn by Lesley Britton. We love recycling and here is how you can make your recycled Pickin game quickly.

What You Need:

11 bottle tops (we collected ours from our 1/2 gallon milk containers)

1 12 sided die (we found one at Staples thanks to our lovely suggestions from our Montessori homeschool yahoo group)

scrapbooking sticker numbers or just a permanent marker

Here is what you do:

1. Take your 11 bottle tops and label them 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. (see photo below) We used scrapbook stickers, you can use those or a permanent marker.

2. Locate your 12 sided die

3. Play!

Here’s how:

With 2 players line the pieces all in front of one of the players, the other player gets to go first and rolls the die. (Figure this according to your standard traditions, I pretty much just always go second, the book suggests to roll to see who gets the highest number to go first.)

The player who rolls must then choose two markers that add up to the number shown on the top of the die.

The player continues until they can no longer add up to the number on the top of the die.

Then it’s the other players turn. This goes back and forth until all of the markers are on one side.

These are the instructions I keep reading in our book and I’ve seen online, but I get confused because DUH! 11 markers will always leave one behind, so we might ditch our zero. It just kind of tags along right now. I wonder if I’m just not seeing the light, so we’ll keep it around for now.

Our entire game fits into our beautifully decorated (with stickers from the dentist office) baking powder can. Our game is highly mobile and a huge hit. My son just can’t get enough of it. Also, we use our red/blue rods as reference for the addition. We lay it out on the table for my son to use and count out sums to see if he can reach what he rolled.

 

Link to Addition Strip Board

Once again, thanks to the sharing on the awesome Yahoo Montessori group, here is an addition strip board to print out.

addition strip board

 

Handmade Montessori Number Rods in 5 Minutes

You can make Montessori number rods from 3 pieces of construction paper. Yes, these are a paper substitute for wooden rods, that is something you have to decide about. If you are okay with that, proceed.

1. You will need three pieces of construction paper, one red, one blue, and one of your choosing for the backing.

2.  Lay the blue and red pieces with the longest sides on the top and bottom. Using a cutter, slice red pieces, from top to bottom 1 inch wide. You will need 5 strips. Using a cutter, slice blue pieces, from top to bottom 1 inch wide. You will need 5 strips.

3. Lay your uncut construction paper (mine was blue) in front of you with the longest sides on the top and bottom. START with a RED strip. Glue this to the FAR LEFT of your bottom backer paper. Next glue a BLUE strip. Continue gluing all 10 strips across the paper.

4. Now take your fully glued paper and put it in your cutter with the SHORTEST sides on the top and bottom. Measure 3/4 inches and slice. Do this 10 times.

5. To finish this off, just trim each rod to include the stair steps of numbers one through ten. BE SURE TO ALWAYS START WITH THE RED PAPER RECTANGLE ON THE LEFT.

6. We laminated ours and used them that night. Oddly enough we found some red/blue stacking plastic squares at a garage sale for $1 shortly thereafter. So, now we use those, but these worked great in the interim.