Complete Resource List

Sushi Go Party! is a fun, speedy game with some really adorable artwork. Plus, it comes in a cute “bento box” tin—so clever! In this fast-paced, pick-and-pass game, you earn points by picking winning sushi combinations. You must grab cards you need as they quickly go by. You can score points for making the most maki rolls or collecting a full set of sashimi, or you can triple the value or your nigiri by adding wasabi! Sushi Go Party! is a unique way to practice basic addition skills, strategy, probability, and some quick thinking.

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This suspenseful card game helps to teach both addition skills and strategy, and is fun to play for children and adults alike. The object of Rat-a-Tat Cat is to get the lowest score by trying to get rid of the rat cards (high) and go for the cat cards (low). Players are dealt four cards face down, but you can take an initial peek at two of the cards. At each turn, a player pulls a card from the draw pile to replace one of their four cards. But with only that initial peek, you must remember what cards you have and keep track of those values. Throughout the game you have options to sneak a peek at another’s cards, draw two, or swap cards with another player. To do well in this game, you need good timing, memory skills, and awareness of others (particularly poker faces!). This game is even a great way to start developing probability skills.

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Use candy to teach your child the basics of probability! With just a bit of familiarity with fractions and some candy of different colors on hand, you can have fun and learn all about chance. In this activity, your child will sort candy by color and determine what fraction of the total each color group represents. Then, candy pieces are drawn blindly and the results are compared to the probability indicated by the original fractions.

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Murphy introduces probability through young Jack’s bad day. As Jack goes through his day, he makes numerous predictions based on reasoning and the probability of something happening, with his thinking made clear in thought balloons above his head. His soccer coach “nearly always” chooses teams in the same way, but this day he decided to change things up and so Jack and his friend are not on the same team. His family almost never has pizza on a Monday, but when Jack gets home he thinks he smells it, only to find that it is just spaghetti. The words “probably”, “usually”, and “sometimes” are also used to indicate likelihood throughout the story.

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I was introduced to this game over winter break one year (thanks to my brother-in-law, Brandon!) when we played as a whole family. The ages of our group ranged from a 7-year-old all the way up to the grandparents and everyone had a great time playing the game. It can be simple enough for the little ones to play, but variations can give it enough complexity to keep it interesting. The premise of the game is to keep rolling the two dice, adding up the total, and then knocking over numbers that make that total. You keep rolling until there is nothing else you can knock over. For example, if you roll a 3 and a 2, you can knock over anything that adds up to 5 (1 and 4, 3 and 2, or 5), but if you’ve already knocked over all of those numbers, then your turn is over. At the end of your turn, you add up all of your remaining numbers and that is your score, with the object to have the lowest score each round, or ideally to “shut the box”, meaning you were able to knock down all of the numbers. We played with a variation that each player could choose to either add the two numbers on the dice or multiply them. This variation was not in the directions, so this was our own improvisation. The game is great for reinforcing addition and multiplication facts, aiding in thinking about numbers flexibly, and even gets kids thinking about probability and using that in their strategies.

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This is a game that I happened upon at a teacher store one summer. It works best with 2 or 4 players and one person reading the answer key. In each round, the players get a case to solve (all the players have the same case). Each player gets one of the four case cards (or 2 each if playing with 2 players); on one side the case is stated and on the other side each card has a different alibi. Each player must decide whether the alibi is correct or whether that person is guilty. Players must do this by determining whether the math in the alibi is correct. If the math is incorrect, then that person is guilty. The object is to earn the most points by correctly determining guilt and innocence throughout the game. I have only played the third grade version, but I like how the game covers so much of third grade math, from multi-digit addition and subtraction to fractions to geometry.

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This is a game that I happened upon at a teacher store one summer. It works best with 2 or 4 players and one person reading the answer key. In each round, the players get a case to solve (all the players have the same case). Each player gets one of the four case cards (or 2 each if playing with 2 players); on one side the case is stated and on the other side each card has a different alibi. Each player must decide whether the alibi is correct or whether that person is guilty. Players must do this by determining whether the math in the alibi is correct. If the math is incorrect, then that person is guilty. The object is to earn the most points by correctly determining guilt and innocence throughout the game. I have only played the third grade version, but I like how the game covers so much of third grade math, from multi-digit addition and subtraction to fractions to geometry.

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This book on Hawaii offers a great explanation for kids about why the time zones exist, as well as covers estimation, arithmetic, data, measurement, and elapsed time.  

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This book about ancient Rome covers arithmetic, fractions, and estimation. 

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This book focuses on the Bahamas—tourism, navigation, climate, and scuba diving. There are lots of colorful photographs as well as activities and questions throughout. Measurement, large numbers, arithmetic, data, estimation, money, and graphing are all covered. 

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