Making Ten- Math Game for Kindergarteners

I always read about how pushed little kids are- Kindergartners are doing things that first and second graders used to do.  Kids are expected to have skills before they even enter Kinder to keep up with their classmates.  The pressure is on parents even at the very beginning of education.  While I absolutely detest the idea of homework in Kindergarten I do believe that young children are sponges and love to learn so why not teach them skills.... in a fun way.  I was reading about math games geared towards older kids and decided to modify them to fit my 5 year old Pre-K daughter.  After a few rounds she loved it.

Supplies needed:

2 decks of cards with the face cards removed.  Keep the aces.  (I used some random decks we had around the house, it ended up being 63 cards)

How to play:

Deal four cards to each person.  Then place four cards in the middle as a community pile.  On your turn, you get to use as many cards as needed to make ten.  You can use 1 card, 2 cards, 3 cards, etc.  You get to make as many tens as your can using all 8 cards.  Place each ten in a pile to count up later.

  

Here is my hand.  These are the ten piles that I made.

I used all of my cards and there were 2 left in the community pile.  The next person gets 2 additional cards to make 4 and the 4 in their hand to make as many tens as they can.  Continue play until there are no cards left- give each person cards before the community pile.  My last turn I had 2 cards in the community pile and 3 in my hand.  Once no one could make ten again the game was over.  Then count up your tens and see who wins.  

Please don't let your 5 year old win to make them feel better about themselves.  They are at the age where they start to play games with their friends and they aren't always going to win.  It is time to teach them how to be good sports- a good winner and a good loser.

You can also make the game more interesting for an older child by allowing them to add and subtract cards to get ten.  Heck, if they are even older, let them add in multiplication and division.

You may also like these Games to learn Sight Words for your Kindergartners