Introduction

This is my favourite of the maths lessons. The idea is that they are to make a board game in the hour lesson and then the best one gets a prize.  To make the board game I provide the following bits:

A4 white card - for board
4 Counters
Dice
Coloured paper
Pens, glue and scissors

The dice and counters are not essential.  Instead of dice you can make spinners out of circles of card and a short pencil and counters are easy to make.  First of all we brainstorm different board games then I leave them to it.  I normally offer a small edible prize for the winner.

Examples of Boards (yr 3-4 Osbaldwick Primary School)

Other Mathematical Games

I also play a game called Nop which is a very simple game for 2 people which requires you to think ahead.  You require 12 similar objects, I use upturned cards.   Place them in 3 columns, one with 5 cards, one with 4 cards and one with 3 cards.   Each go you take it in turns to select a column and you can take as many cards as you want from that column e.g.1,2 or all of them.  This continues selecting a column and them removing some cards from it until there is one card left and the person that gets that card loses.  So the idea is NOT to get the last card.

Sample game

Nop secrets.

The following situations are losing situations for the player faced with them.   Therefore if you manipulate the cards to get in these situations you will win.