Activity Introduction
Cowboys used to play this game to prove who was the fastest mathematician in the old west. Race your family, friends or just yourself to improve your addition skills and win the title of fastest number-slinger.
This is a good activity for kids to complete independently, but can also be fun to do together as a family.
Ideal for: Middle Primary Ages 7 – 9
Themes:
- playtime
- brain teasers
Time required: < 5 minutes
Curriculum connections: Mathematics, Numeracy
Kids with low mental arithmetic strategies may be discouraged at this activity. Tell them to persevere and take away the timer aspect if it is too daunting. The better they get at quickly understanding combining numbers, the faster their overall maths skills will improve.
Kids will find it most difficult to add over multiples of ten, i.e. 7 + 5.
The best approach is to split the numbers to best quickly make the 10, then add the remainder.
- 5 + 5 = 10
- 7 – 5 = 2
- 5 + (5+2) = 12
Curriculum codes:
- Year 3: ACMNA055
- Deck of playing cards
- Timer or device with a stopwatch
.
[email protected] from Cool Australia
[email protected] resources are designed for parents and teachers to use with children in the home environment. They can be used as stand-alone activities or built into existing curriculum-aligned learning programs. Our [email protected] series includes two types of resources. The first are fun and challenging real-world activities for all ages, the second are self-directed lessons for upper primary and secondary students. These lessons support independent learning in remote or school settings.
Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.
