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!!
What a fun way to practice the math facts! We enjoy playing the games from the Right Start math curriculum. I also made some of those “fortune teller” folded paper things (remember those from elementary school?) and wrote problems on the flaps and the answers on the inside as a self-checking practice manipulative. Pyramath looks like tons of fun — cool give-away!
Fun! Math can be so much fun, I wish I grew up with fun math 😉
We like to practice math while baking or cooking, both with cups and metric!
I’ve been meaning to try that game! We’ve been playing pyramid solitaire – set up a pyramid with the base closest to you – six cards on the bottom (tens and face cards removed). Remove pairs that add up to ten. My daughter started with a cheat sheet, and now knows her facts easily!
I’d love to try it out. If I don’t win the free desk, I’ll go buy a deck. Thanks.
This looks like fun! We use the RightStart math card games now to learn and reinforce math. We also do a lot of reading about math (using recommendations from the livingmath.net site).
Love that these cards have the numbers in multiple languages! How cool is that!
This looks fun! We have played “war” by adding/subtracting two cards for highest total. We also like playing S’math. We also like to play blokus, quoridor and stomple which focus on logic.
This looks like fun and would be a great way to reinforce the math facts! We’ve been playing lots of games to help with that and this looks like one we may have to add to our collection.
I just shared that on facebook to let all my friends know about this game.
Oh fun! Right now, our favorite math thing is just playing with blocks, especially Trio Blocks, which are essentially math manipulatives as they are attached in groups from 1-5 already. They have helped my son understand “groups” tremendously.
This looks great as I have a mental block with math. I am hoping a game like this will bring it to life for me and my girls.
Thank you for sharing.
Blessings Reba
My husband and I just went to a talk on using Math games. Using games is such a great way to solidify math facts because the children don’t think of it as a chore, like they might with flash cards and worksheets. I have some games from Right Start Math; the PyraMath deck would be a great addition to our repertoire of games!
Wow, we also use Right Start Math and the games to practice our math facts, but believe me we need all the help we can get! Math is not my strong area!! This game looks like lots of fun!! Thanks for sharing!!!
Looks fantastic!
This would be good for my youngest- who needs constant review of math basics- no matter what grade he is in…LOL
and I shared it on my blog.
which is set to Friends Only, but here is the link anyway:
http://www.facebook.com/kterrill5
Sounds fun!
We love to play board games with our little ones.
I love games like this! But I had not heard of this one. I love that it is basically a generic game that can be used in multiple ways. We do all sorts of fun and exciting games for our math. I’ve started talking about all of them on my website–www.adventuretoinspire.com.
I’ve always loved playing math-related board & card games. Never made the connection, but, perhaps that was one reason my math grades were always so high in school.
Looks like a great game! Should be relatively easy to play with a regular deck of cards, too—though, as you point out, the price is very reasonable for their special deck. I’m adding this post to the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival (unless you email me and tell me you’d rather not!)
Wow! Such wonderful games! Thank you all for your comments. Keep ’em coming!
And yes, Denise, you absolutely could play this game with a normal deck of cards! Maybe using the ace as a 1 and the king as a 0 or something like that? I think, for my daughter though, having a special deck with big numbers on it made the game seem even more interesting to her. (And me too:-)
My son is vigilant about avoiding all math lately – about a year ago all he wanted to do was math. Not sure what happened. We are looking for fun ideas.
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