Math Fact Practice: Doubles

This week we have been learning about different strategies for adding numbers. Today’s lesson was about adding doubles. You may (or may not) wonder why students should understand the concept of doubles or adding a number to itself. Well, first if students can memorize their double facts (ie 3+3 or 5+5), they can use those facts to figure out other related facts. For example, if your child knows that 3+3=6, then he can use that fact when solving 3+4 by thinking “if 3+3=6 then 3+4 is 3+3+1 which equals 7. Doubling numbers also helps build a foundation for multiplication as it is basically repeated addition.

I couldn’t find a good game for practicing doubles so I created on myself. This game can be played a few different ways. First you have to print out the templates and assemble the game board. When assembled it looks like the photo below:

Materials:

a playing piece for each player for moving around the board
one die

To Play:

The first player rolls the one die and doubles that number. So if he rolled a 5, he adds 5+5 and determines that the answer is 10. He then moves ten spaces. Each player repeats these steps when it is his/her turn.

If a player lands on a space with writing on it, he does what the space says to do.

Options:

The game can be played for a period of time and in that time, each player keeps a tally record of how many times he passes start. Great review of tallies! Player with the most tallies wins if desired.

Place a chip, popcorn kernel or other small item on each space that does not have words on it. As players land on a space they collect the item. The player with the most items wins.

In my class, we played using the first option without the winning part. I simply set the timer for about 7 minutes, the students played and tallied as they went past start. When the timer went off, the game was over. The students counted their tallies then we cleaned up with no talk of winners or losers.

This game can be found at the following link:

Doubles Game from Boy Mama Teacher Mama

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