| Sample Games Games for Drill and Practice Frequent practice is necessary to attain strong mental arithmetic skills and reflexes. Although drill focused narrowly on rote practice with operations has its place, Everyday Mathematics also encourages practice through games. Drill and games should not be viewed as competitors for class time, nor should games be thought of as time-killers or rewards. In fact, games satisfy many, if not most, standard drill objectives - and with many built-in options. Drill tends to become tedious and, therefore, gradually loses its effectiveness. Games relieve the tedium because children enjoy them. Indeed, children often wish to continue to play games during their free time, lunch, and even recess. Drill exercises aim primarily at building fact and operations skills. Practice through games shares these objectives, but, at the same time, games often reinforce other skills including calculator skills, money exchange and shopping skills, logic, geometric intuition, and intuition about probability and chance (because many games involve numbers that are generated randomly.) Using games to practice number skills also greatly reduces the need for work sheets. Because the numbers in most games are generated randomly, the games can be played over and over without repeating the same problems. Many of the | |
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