More Dot Card Games

Visual Imprinting for Computation

The goal of these activities is for children to develop such a rich visual background for computation that they will “see” the answers in their heads in the form of visuals when confronted with abstract problems on a page. When playing the games, however, the process of laying a visual background is passive. The focus will be on the game, and during the game, visual images will be building in the child’s memory.

Introductory Game

Give the children blank squares of paper and a crayon or marker. Tell them you are going to play a different sort of memory game. You will show them a dot card, they will give it a good look, then you will hide the card and they will draw on a blank card what they remember seeing on your dot card.

Procedure

• Show the children a card.

• Let them take a good look at it, then put the card back into your stack.

• Ask the children to shut their eyes and “see” the card in their imagination. Can they see the pattern of dots? Great!

• Now ask them to open their eyes and draw the same pattern on a blank card.

• When they have completed this task, show them your card and compare yours to theirs.

Computation Imprinting

For these games it will be best to have two identical sets of cards – two copies of each dot pattern. 

Explore the dot patterns before you begin. Pay particular attention to how many different combinations of numbers that each number has. You can only make a three from 2+1. (We are ignoring 0 + the number for now). Four is made of two combinations of numbers, as is five. Six and seven have three possible number combinations, while 8 and 9 have four. Over time, the children will learn that if  you divide a number in half, it will have that same number of possible combinations. Odd numbers can be divided in half but will always have one extra “odd” number that cannot be paired up. I think  there is value in creating dot cards that have two colors like the ones in the illustrations. The color will help the children as they form visual memories. It is likely the children will forever more associate pink and blue with five, and orange and blue with four, however!

Go Fish

The first several times you play Go Fish, play it like you did before, using the total number of dots on the card when asking for a card. When the child has played this way a few times, switch. This time when you play Go Fish, instead of saying “Do you have a  5?” you will say, “Do you have a 1+4=5?” or “Do you have a 5+1=6.”

Memory

Similarly, when playing Memory, at first when you make pairs,  say the total number of dots on the  cards. After a few times playing that way, switch. Rather than calling out the total number, you will say, “6+1=7,” or “2+3=5.”

Next, we will explore ways to build visual memory for number relationships, so watch for that post next Tuesday! And by all means, have fun playing!

Comments

[Teri]

If the kids would always associate the colors with a particular sum (fives being blue and pink), is that a bad thing? I mean, what if we then did activities that had, say, blue fish and pink starfish on their paper, would they automatically think 5 and put that as an answer, possibly? Making that subconscious connection to the colors rather than counting? Would it be better to use different colors sometimes? Or would that interfere with the visual memory? Why not just use black dots in the various patterns? Just curious about the rationale behind the colors?

[sarah major]

I would imagine that if we are using dot cards in color, but we are focused on the numbers, the color would be a secondary issue. The child would be calling out number names. If you are unsure, however, I'd ask the child which would help him the most. Thanks for the comment!