Card Game Roundup - K-2: Math Games the Roam the Concept Range

In Card Game Roundup, Singing Turtle Press rustles up a passel of fun card games that parents and their little cowboys and cowgirls can play together - all the while learning valuable and interesting math skills. The book is for parents with children in grades kindergarten through second grade, but it is also aimed at homeschoolers, tutors and teachers. The games, created by veteran teachers Trudy Bortz and Josh Rappaport (author of the Parents' Choice award-winning Algebra Survival Guide), are so much fun that kids won't even realize they're learning "math" as they play. In Quicksand, players must climb up a tree and grab a branch before they fall into the deadly sand pit below. This game teaches number line concepts, addition, subtraction, and even the notion of positive and negative numbers.In Galloping Guesses, players pretend they are gypsies using "psychic powers" to guess the suit of overturned cards. By keeping track of their guesses, children make discoveries about data and probability.And in the rodeo game Bucking Broncos, children learn about patterns and functions by trying to identify patterns uniting sets of cards. If they get the pattern right, they win rodeo points; get it wrong, and they're bucked off their bronco. The book is beautifully illustrated in soft Western tones by artist Sally Blakemore (winner of the 2002 Children's Literature Choice Award), and it aligns with the Standards 2000 of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.