How To Set Up Mancala Game
Mancala
Players: two
Ages: 5 and up
Purchase : Buy on Amazon (affiliate link) or make your own from an egg carton!
Math Ideas: Subitizing, mental counting, strategic thinking
Questions to Ask:
If you choice this cup, where will your final rock be placed?
How can you string together iii moves this plough?
How many stones do you need to win?
Of all the games I've recommended so far, Mancala is the ane that I think most fondly from my childhood. I vividly remember playing friction match after lucifer with my friend John, arguing over strategy and trash-talking the way that only eight-yr-olds can.
I loved this game as a child for the same reasons that I love information technology as a parent: Mancala is a breeze to larn, easy to gear up, play, and clean up, and contains far more strategy than yous might expect.
How to Play
Mancala originated in Ethiopia hundreds of years ago, and so at that place are many variations on the game. So if yous grew upwards playing a dissimilar version, play on! All the variations of Mancala involve rich mathematical ideas.
Two players sit down in front end of a lath with 6 cups on each side, also as a larger cup, known as the mancala, on ether end of the board.
On your plough, y'all pick up the stones in one loving cup on your side and move counterclockwise, placing i stone in each cup. You place stones in your mancala, only not your opponent's. The goal is to become every bit many stones in your mancala as possible.
There are a couple of rules that actually deepen the strategy of the game. First, if your final stone is placed in your mancala, you go to get again. In this style, you or your child can string together 2, three, or four moves in a single turn.
Secondly, if your concluding stone lands in an empty cup on your side of the board, you get to collect that stone, equally well as whatsoever stones in the cup across from you lot, and identify them all in the mancala. As a result, the game tin swing back and forth quickly, which keeps information technology exciting from beginning to finish. This rule likewise gets the players as focused on offense and defense, equally they try to protect the stones on their side from their opponent'due south captures.
Every bit I said, there are many variations, and then play however yous desire! If you demand a visual demonstration, this video is a dainty, concise explanation of the version I play.
Where's the Math?
I wouldn't expect any child younger than 5 to fully sympathise Mancala. Despite this, I even so play this game with my iii-year-erstwhile daughter. She doesn't fully empathise the intricacies, of the game, but Mancala is the perfect mode for immature kids to practice counting.
A lot of young children struggle to match objects and words when counting. My daughter can count a set of iii stones, but if I ask her to count 8 or x, she's sure to rush through, counting "sixseveneightnine"without matching each number to a stone.
Just the physical act of placing the stones in the cups slows her down, allowing her to accurately count eight, ten, or more stones. The ritual of placing each stone also helps with her fine motor command.
My five-year-old son is able to think more than strategically, and he is entirely focused on landing his last stone in that mancala! As a result, he has to mentally count the stones in each of his cups, and then visualize placing each of those stones in a loving cup to encounter whether he'd land in the mancala or not. Keeping all that mental math directly is a claiming, simply he doesn't mind, just so long as he lands in that mancala and gets another plough to plan out his moves.
Equally I said earlier, the strategy gets fifty-fifty deeper from in that location. I have come up upward with puzzles for older kids such as this 1: tin can you figure out how to motility all v stones into the mancala on a single turn?
Questions to Ask
Since my daughter is still developing her counting skills, I like to ask her a lot of prediction questions. Prediction questions are a fantastic mode to become kids of all ages to reflect on how their choices affect the future. When y'all inquire your child to predict, they double the amount of thinking at each determination. First they call up, "What will happen if I choose this?" and so later on they choose, they think "Did my prediction match the effect?"
With my daughter, I like to ask her to predict on my motion. I'll selection upward a gear up of six stones and say "where do y'all think the concluding stone will get?" She usually gets the answer incorrect, simply who cares? She'southward iii. And over fourth dimension she'll get better at looking at the pile of stones and internalizing its quantity. Her predictions volition improve with fourth dimension.
With older kids, I like to enquire questions that go them to evaluate multiple options on each turn. Subsequently all, the more time they spend weighing their options, the more math they're doing in their heads.
If I see that they take a good motility, I'll say, "I really promise you don't run into that cracking motility you have!" Zilch gets a child searching faster than a fearful annotate similar that.
I besides like request questions at the end of the game, when both players count up their stones. Kids come up up with lots of counting strategies, and I love to question them most how they're counting. For case, they might group by fives, group past tens, or simply count by ones in a disorganized fashion.
When kids count in a disorganized fashion, sometimes I'm a little mean. I interrupt their counting with a question, distract them, and then say "Oh, I'grand distressing. You were counting. What were yous up to?" Usually they stare at the pile of stones, start over with a sigh, and exercise a better job of setting aside the ones that they've already counted.
If your immature kid has too much problem counting big sets of numbers, you tin can say "Let's set up a new game with the stones from our mancalas. Once we've ready, how tin can we tell who won?" This way, your child simply has to repeatedly count to four. Once they stop setting up, you can talk well-nigh the fact that the winner is the person who has leftover stones after setting upwards their side of the lath.
A overnice brainteaser for older kids is this: "When we play, somebody e'er wins by 4 or 6 or x or 12 stones. Why does the winner ever win by an even number of stones?
I honey Mancala because it's such a flexible game that allows kids at different age levels to savor it for unlike reasons. Since the games only last five or ten minutes, it'south a mainstay in my household and my math classroom.
Click here to buy Mancala on Amazon (chapter link)
Source: https://www.gamesforyoungminds.com/blog/2018/2/15/mancala
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