Homeschool Math: Our DIY Roll to a Hundred Game

I have a strict Montessori-style policy that I do not discourage my children from doing academic work that is "too easy" for them. If Willow wants to play the Jump Start Kindergarten CD-Rom that I checked out from the public library for Sydney, then that's okay. If Sydney wants to spend the afternoon working color-by-number pages, then that is totally fine by me. If Willow suddenly develops a passion for those old First Chapter Books that she first read two years ago, and reads them all again, then good for her!

It's an important part of my homeschool philosophy that repetition reinforces skills, internalizes concepts, and builds the feelings of mastery that reward children for learning, and the confidence to take on more learning challenges.

Therefore, although our DIY Roll to a Hundred Game highlights skills that both my girls have already learned, we LOVE this game! It's excellent reinforcement for number recognition, sequencing, counting, and addition concepts. The unpredictable nature of the roll of the die prepares the girls for future lessons on statistics, graphing, and averages. The coloring requires fine motor skills, and is also graphing, and pattern-building.

Oh, and the game is based on a die, so the little one can win as often as the big one does, hallelujah.

To play Roll to a Hundred, you will need:

• a copy of a Hundred Grid for each person. You can use either a labeled hundred grid, or a blank hundred grid that the child labels for herself--this turns the potentially tedious activity of labeling a hundred grid into a useful activity that a child might choose to do for herself, by the way!
• one die
• crayons

1. Decide who goes first. The first player has the advantage, so it's important to remember to take turns.

2. During her turn, a player rolls the die--

--and then colors the same number of squares as pips on the die:

3. Change crayons each time so that you can see each individual roll on your hundred grid, and the first person to reach one hundred--

Wins!!!

We play such that you have to roll to reach 100 exactly--waiting for that perfect roll gives everyone time to catch up and makes the game a little more exciting.

Ways to modify the game:

• Use two dice, or a 20-sided die, etc.
• Play on a 200 number grid. 
• Play on a number line.
• Play Roll to Zero, where the game is subtraction!
• Multiply each roll by two.
• Assign a different mathematical operation to each number: One must be subtracted, Two gets doubled, Three gets added to the previous roll, Four gets divided by two, etc.
• Have everyone graph their rolls to see how many times each person rolled each number.

It's certainly not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon!