Wow!  Thank you all so much for your wonderful comments and math game suggestions!  We are excited to try them out.  We are also very excited to tell you that we now have decks of PrimeBomb and Fractazmic that we will be reviewing soon.

So, with out any further ado… The winner of the Pyramath deck is:

Vanessa!!

Congratulations, Vanessa.  I’ll be contacting you soon for shipping details.

In early May, I read this review on a game called PyraMath and immediately thought it would be a great way to practice math facts with Kaia.  I went to the website and clicked on the link to Play.  We happened to be visiting in Boston a the time, but I thought I’d just play through it once to see if I thought it would really be useful.  Unfortunately, I got sucked in!  I kept trying to beat my best time and ended up playing late into the night.  All that play paid off when I won a deck of PyraMath cards!

The day that they arrived I think we ended up playing a gazillion times!!  I showed Kaia how to play a solitaire game beginning with 5 cards.  Each card has a number on it, from 0 to 9, and the number word written in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Roman, and Chinese (so they learn a little about other languages at the same time!).  The first 5 cards are put out in a line.  Then Kaia drew a card from the main pack and see if she could use it in an equation.  

Here you can see that her top cards were 1, 4, 5, 2, and 0.  Between adjacent cards you use either addition, subtraction multiplication, or division to create your answer.  So, between 1 and 4, she used the number 3 when it was drawn from the deck, because 4-1=3.  Over on the other side, between 2 and 0, she used the number 0, because 2×0=0.   The cards that couldn’t be played were placed in a discard pile and play continues until the last card on the pyramid is placed.  She loved it!  And I love that this deck can be used for kids that may only know addition facts up to adults who just want to review.  So, I can play with Leif when he gets a little older, too.  And really, for Kaia, the game isn’t at all about math practice, it’s just about having fun.

Later in the evening, she challenged me to a game, which she won.  We started this game with 7 cards.  Her pyramid is on the right.  We haven’t covered division yet in school, but she started working out a few equations on her own here.

So, because I love finding ways to make math fun, and the fabulous people at PyraMath sent along a deck to give to you lovely readers, I’m having a giveaway!  YAY!!

Here are the rules:

• For one chance to win, simply leave a comment.  You don’t have to, but I’d love to hear your favorite ways to ‘play’ with math.
• For another chance to win, share this giveaway on your blog or facebook, and leave me a comment about it.

Don’t forget to leave a way to contact you if you win!  If you don’t win, don’t be discouraged!  A deck costs only $6.95 plus shipping, which I think is completely worth it!! (and no, I’m not being paid to say that!)

I’ll draw the winner on Monday, June 20th, at 7pm EST.

Now I’m off to the PyraMath Wiki page to learn more ways to play!!

One of the games I thought we might play this summer to sharpen Kaia’s math skills is Multiplication Bingo.  I found this great site for creating your own Bingo cards, Print Bingo, and simply plugged in the answers to the multiplication facts for 2×2 through 9×9.  If two or more equations have the same answer, like 3 x 4 = 12 and 2 x 6 = 12, I only entered the number 12 once on the bingo sheet.  I printed the cards out on yellow paper and ran them through my handy-dandy laminator.

Then I wrote down the equations on red paper and laminated them, too.  I wasn’t planning to pulling this game out until the next time she said “MOM!  I’m bored!”, but Kaia saw me doing this and wanted to play immediately.  So, we put the red equations into a paper bag.  She would pull them out, one at a time, and say the answer.  If either of us found the answer on our card, we’d cover it with a blue cube.  I was the first to yell “BINGO!”, so we kept playing until she made 5 in a row and could scream it herself, too.  Next time I think I’ll use chocolate covered raisins instead of blue cubes.  Then we can eat our playing chips when we are done!  Yay for fun learning!