In our household, we have something called “Creative Time.” This is when my son chooses an activity or a game he and I can play. This is my time to follow his lead in whatever creative project he wants to do.
This time, he pulled out his bowling game and said, “Let’s play!”
While playing the game we incorporated addition so my son could practice his math skills. If your child is not doing addition yet, use this game to practice counting and number recognition. Like all games we play, we had a blast!
I will show you how we played below!
Let’s get started!
Materials:
- Bowling game set (you may also use paper cups as an alternative)
- paper
- pencil
How to play:
- On a piece of paper, draw separate columns and put each player’s initial at the top to keep score
- Set up the ten pins
- Have the first player roll the first ball towards the pins
- Have the first player roll the second ball towards the pins (the bowling game comes with two balls)
- The number of pins a player knocks down is the person’s score that round.
- For example, if a player knocks down eight pins then their score is eight for that round.
- Record the score in that player’s column on paper.
- The next player will go and repeat the previous five steps.
- My son added both our bowling scores for all the rounds.
- It was a great way to practice addition.
- Below is what my son wrote.
- Have your child count the number of pins knocked down for each round if you want to do number recognition instead of addition.
My son created a spin-off addition game. You will hear about that next week!
Stay tuned!
Have Fun with this Activity!
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What a great, fun way to encourage learning as well as teaching kids why math is important in real life!
Thank you for your comment. Math is always fun when there is a game involved.
This is so neat! My oldest is a budding “mathlete” like her mama 😉 she wants to practice math problems all the time. This puts such a fun spin on it. Perfect timing with our Thanksgiving break next week. We’ll have lots of time to fill!
Oh wonderful! I am glad you found this helpful! Have fun with this game.
This is a pretty cool Idea. my son has several bowling kits but I never thought to use them for addition. We will have to try this.
Oh yes! The bowling kits are great for math! Thank you for your comment.
I love the simplicity, but genius of this idea. Children always learn better when they’re engaged or having fun. Excellent idea.
Thank you for your comment. Yes my son always learns better when he is engaged.
Great idea to have kids practice math by keeping score while you play a fun family game.
Thank you for your comment! We had a great time doing this activity.
My son would LOVE this idea! He likes to learn and obviously LOVES playing games (he thinks math is easy) LOL! You could probably do the same concept but multiplication as well 🤔
Oh good. I hope he enjoys this game!
Anytime you can incorporate learning into a fun game that is a win. Great idea and thank you for sharing!
Yes this is so true! Thank you for your comment.