By Michael Hartley
If your kids are learning their times tables, and need a break from the normal drills, teach them this times tables game!
The rules of times tables snap are simple enough. First, you'll need some times tables playing cards. Download, print out (preferably onto cardboard), and cut out the cards. There are two sets of cards, one containing the Times Tables Questions, and the other containing the Answers. If you find the cards are too big, feel free to reduce them on a photocopy machine.
Then, the game goes like this.
- At the start of the game, the cards should be shuffled, and distributed evenly to the players.
- The players keep their cards face down in a stack.
- One by one, they take the top card from their stack, and place it on a pile in the middle.
- When the card just placed matches the one before it, the players should call SNAP! and slap their hand on top of the middle pile. The first player to do this gets to keep all the cards in the pile.
- Some matches will be easy - for example, if 24 is played on top of 24.
- Other matches will require knowledge of times tables - for example, if 7x7 is played on top of 49.
- In my opinion, the most interesting matches of all will be when two matching question cards are played, for example if 4x9 is played on top of 12x3.
- The winner is the player with the most cards left at the end. Feel free to devise your own rules for when this "end" actually occurs!
Yours, Dr Mike...