Game Night!

Last night was math game night at Cole's school. That is one thing that I do enjoy about Cole's school. They have special nights once or twice a month where parents can come to the school with their kids and do fun things together, but it always incorporates learning and fun together. They don't have too many things available for parents to volunteer to do during school hours, but they try to make an effort to get parents involved after school. They served everyone pizza, salad, drinks, and a cookie for dinner. I thought that was nice. We didn't have to pay anything. Then everyone was given a big envelope and everyone was divided into different classrooms with their same grade. You were given instructions on how to play a certain game that involved math and what they've learned so far in math. You were given about 10-15 minutes to play it with your child. After that, another game was introduced. Then you would go to another room where you learned two more games and that was it! It was a lot of fun. The first game involved a number grid. Unlike the one above, this one started at 0 and went to 50. Everyone was given a token and a die. There was a sheet telling you how many spaces you got to move with each roll. The catch was that you sometimes had to move back so many spaces for certain rolls. The first one to 50 won the game. I can't remember who won that game. We didn't have enough time to finish the game. The next game dealt with money. They have been learning the value of coins and how to exchange money. You were given small squares that had pictures of a combination of pennies, nickels, and dimes on them. Then there were some squares that had circles with either a P, N, or D inside the circle representing which coin they were. The game was played like war. You had to divide the "cards" up between two people, then flip them over and count them up to see who had the most amount of money on their card. Mason won that game. It was so funny cuz he didn't know what the money meant or its' value, but every time he flipped over his card he would announce, "I win!" lol It was so comical because he would! Cole only took 3 of Mason's cards during the whole game. In the next classroom, we were given another number grid. This one went from 1 to 100. It was similar to the other game we learned on the number grid, except if you rolled a 1 you had the choice of moving one space or 10. If you rolled a 2 you could move 2 spaces or twenty. If you rolled a 3, 4, or 5 you moved exactly that. It was halfway during the game when I noticed that Chris kept getting two's. I kind of laughed and said, "You're not going very far! You need to get something higher than a 2!" Not even thinking about it, a few rolls later Cole got a 2. I say, "Cole! You get to jump twenty spaces!" At the exact same time, it dawns on me and Chris that all this time, he could have been jumping twenty spaces for all those two's he had been rolling. We laughed so hard! I don't know why I didn't think of it when he kept rolling two's but I noticed when Cole rolled one. It was pretty funny. Obviously, Chris didn't win that game either. Mason won it. It was a fun night of learning and just being together and supporting Cole with his school work.