Race to 100 – Get Moving

One of my challenges in introducing math concepts to Anna is my inability to see if she understands them or not. She resists anything that looks like a test to her – in fact, she even deliberately gives wrong answers sometimes and watches for my reaction. I tried to introduce her to 100 board before, but she was less than thrilled about it. So I decided to shake things up by adding a twist to a standard “Race to 100” game. A long time ago I downloaded a nice set of action cards from Teach Mama. Now I finally printed them out and cut them (I also modified a few of them a little bit). Each of us rolled a dice, moved a game piece, called the new number out, and then performed a card action. I don’t have any pictures of an actual game, but despite being in a cranky mood, Anna really got into it and was giggling happily when she got “flap your wings” and “wiggle” cards. Suddenly a “boring” 100 board was not so boring any longer, and Anna called out the numbers without any effort and any “pretend mistakes”, since she didn’t think about this step as a focus of a game. I am going to extend the set in the future, so we can play it all the way to 100 one day. I also recommend visiting Adventures of Bear and Joyful Learner for some other great ideas related to 100 board.