Much maths!

When I arrived downstairs this morning, M was on the computer doing some Timez Attack and K had already had a go too.  Both girls had initially been quite keen on this (free!) programme when I got it about 18 months ago, but both had quickly got rather frustrated because of the speed needed to complete the questions.  After a break of about a year they came back to it and got on better and started playing again for a while.  It seems that it's something that they will return to every so often and each time they are making a bit more progress.  In the game, there is a sort of test that you can't progress past unless you get all the questions right first time, and as the game builds up through the times tables, even if you know all your 10, 11 and 5 times tables for example, but are a bit shaky on the higher parts of the 3 times table, you'll stay there until you are completely confident.  That's where the girls are at the moment, but they seem happy with it, so that's okay.

We had a pyjama day today, but that didn't stop the learning of course.  Admittedly K & M spent most of the building and then playing with Lego, but after we'd caught up with the Great British Bake Off, which I'd recorded, we finally got round to playing Vapoosh!  It was really fun and we ended up playing three times, twice the three of us and then again with A after tea.  In terms of the maths, there is the mental addition of adding the pairs of numbers on the dice together, as well as the times tables.  I encouraged K & M to try to work out the answer before lookign for it on the board and also to say the sum and the answer aloud, to help learn their tables and they were generally willing to do both of these and a bit of silliness helped as we chanted things like "Seven eights are fifty six and eight sevens are fifty six as well!".

We also talked about probability as in the second game I scored a Vapoosh! (i.e. I rolled four sixes).

Vapoosh!

I explained that there was a one in six chance of a six on each dice and that you multiply them all together to get the probability of all of them being six, which is 1/1296.  K had previously rolled four ones, which has the same low probability as Vapoosh!, but unfortunately for her doesn't automatically win the game.  We also talked about how most of the counters on the board were around the middle, because it's much more likely to roll a seven with two dice, than a two because there is only one way of rolling two (1 & 1), but three ways to roll a seven for example (1 & 6, 2 & 5 and 3 & 4).  We beat the odds and in our third game A won by rolling a Vapoosh! too. 

 All in all a really good game with resulted in much more maths than it said on the box, so to speak.