Rightstart Math Games

[Nina]

I was hoping some of you could tell me what were your children's favorite RS math games? The book says it has over 300 games, but which ones did your family enjoy playing the most?

 

Did your children enjoy playing the games or did you feel that they were kind of unoriginal? Also, out of the 300 games, do you really just find yourself playing a few over and over?

 

I am thinking of getting this to spice up my math program but don't want to waste my money!

 

Thanks!

[benjabber]

I'm interested in the responses. Thanks for asking the question.

[Debbie in OR]

We have the book and I must say, at this point (we are going into our second year with RS), we usually only play about 7 games, over and over again. This isn't because the games are not good, though; it's mainly because we haven't really gone through the book and attempted most of them. We wind up doing those games that are scheduled for that day. I have pulled out a few that were not listed on the schedule and a couple of them turned out to be "keepers", a few of them had a one-time shelf life. I did just get the RS Game CD that has visual instructions on how to play the top 6 or 7 games and we did learn a few from this and really enjoyed. I feel certain there are many more in there that one or the other of my kids would really like AND find helpful with their particular math issue, but it just hasn't happened so far.

 

So, this summer, instead of "doing" math, my goal is to search through the book and in a systematic way play most of them and find the really good ones. And as for the games we do consistently play, my dc absolutely love them. They beg for them sometimes. On nights when we have family game nights, they have even asked for the math games instead of Monopoly or Clue or whatever! Plus, on those days when I can tell they are reaching the point of math no-return, I close up the books for a few days and all we do are games. Then they are ready to start back up with the curriculum and I still feel like we "got math done" during that time.

 

But my dc are also game-playing kind of kids. I know of some kids who just really do not like playing games of any kind and the math games were no exception.

 

My overall recommendation would be if your dc like games generally and you are willing to take some time and really wade through the book, you would probably find many in there that would be an asset to your math curriculum.

[Nina]

Debbie,

 

Thanks for your response, would you mind telling me what are the names of the the 5 games your children like to play?

 

Thanks!

[Ravin]

I'm planning on ordering the games sometime before fall, to supplement Noble Knights of Knowledge. For K I plan on us just playing a lot of math games, because my DD really loves games and I don't want to push a formal curric this early.

[BabyBre]

My dc's favorite is "Go to the Dump". Basically, it's Go Fish but instead of matching pairs of numbers, you match numbers that total 10, or 15, etc. Not sure why it's called that. One of my favorites is the Corners Game.

 

I absolutely love the RightStart methods. It's just my learning style - It's helped ME with the simple math functions that should have been second nature in elementary school. Believe it or not, I would count on my fingers before I found RightStart. It didn't, however, turn out to be such a great fit for my dc. We switched back to Saxon but kept our RS manipulatives and card games. We use the abacus almost every day with our Saxon lesson.

 

I, too, plan to go through the card games systematically this summer to reinforce RS strategies and concepts.

[Debbie in OR]

Debbie,

 

Thanks for your response, would you mind telling me what are the names of the the 5 games your children like to play?

 

Thanks!

 

Sure....We love Rows and Columns (addition), Go to the Dump, Sum Rummy, Who's On Top (multiplication), Multiplication Memory, Lowest in the Corners (exactly like King's Corners; multiplication/skip counting), Addition Chain Solitaire/Subtraction Chain Solitaire (I probably like this one more than they do because it is one of the games that they have to do themselves while I work with another child!), Corners/Subtraction Corners, One (learning to use different fractions to equal the number one), Mystery Minute and 15 Minutes Later (both learning to tell time...my dd7 loves these!), and any of the War games (ds9 loves these!).

 

OK, wow, there are way more than 7 there! Although, some of them are the same game with variations (subtracting instead of adding, etc.). I did not realize how many of them we were actually playing! HTH!

[Nina]

Thanks Debbie! Anybody else with input?