Math games and life skills

Today turned into a math day. Y. had reached a chapter in her math book which required her to find the amount of change for each of the transactions listed. What the book didn't explain was how to actually make change and count it out. I decided that this was the perfect moment to combine a little life skills teaching along with a math lesson.

Probably my slight obsession with being able to count back change is from the years I spent working the concessions at ASU football games as a high schooler. The marching band did this to raise money, and I became very adept at counting back change, especially since we were supplies with nothing more than a pad of paper and a pen. Technology is nice, but it never serves anyone well to be too dependent on it.

So I got out my handy box of money, and the younger group happily created a store so everyone could shop.

I wrote random price tags that were put on the items in the store, and then, armed with $30, each person got a turn to shop, followed by a turn to play cashier. Some caught on immediately, others will need a bit more practice, but it was a start. Then, because this is a personal hobby horse, I decided to make sure my older children could all make change as well. D., TM, and P. all had to play cashier for a while, though grudgingly, while I made sure they could correctly count back change to their customer. It got me to thinking when the last time I had a cashier actually count back my change instead of dumping it into my hand. I realized I am probably heading into the old and crotchety category.

After our little shopping expedition, we went ahead and played the math game I had planned for the day. It was a multiplication game which used dice and Legos. I mean, when you have a cool die like this, how can you not use it?

Do you see the smaller ten sided die inside the larger ten sided die? Isn't it cool? I had each child roll the dice, and then multiply the two numbers that came up. That number was then the number of blocks they got to use to create a tower. In theory, we would do this for several rounds, and the person with the biggest city would win. In reality, as much as I feel inundated with too many Legos on a daily basis, we did not have enough Legos, if you can imagine such a thing. It might have worked if I had stuck to two six-sided dice, but when multiplying larger numbers, it used up the available Lego blocks exceedingly quickly. It was kind of too bad, because everyone was really enjoying it, and I could have kept it going for quite some time. With more Legos, it would be an excellent multiplication review.