Add ’em – numbers or months game

Here’s Mido Faird’s game for this week.  It’s great for some simple math or even for months of the year – if you ever got November or December you’d know they were cheating! 🙂

(If you’re on email and can’t see the video, click here!)

1- Divide the class into  teams, call up the the first student from each team and have them stand back to back.
2 – Each students shows a number of fingers on one hand
3- When you say “go” the two students  must turn to face each other.
4- The first student to correctly say the sum of the fingers shown by both hands is the winner.
For the months of the year version they have to say what the month is e.g. July if the total is 7 fingers!
Or you could get them to use both hands for numbers up to 20 or even ordinal numbers up to 20th!
Any other themes you could use with this game?

Richard Graham

Hello, I'm Richard Graham. When I was a kid I found school to be sooooo boring... So I transformed my way of teaching. I listened to what the kids were really wanting to say and taught it in ways they really wanted to learn. The results were magical. Now I help teachers just like you teach amazing lessons and double your incomes!

12 Responses to “Add ’em – numbers or months game”

  1. julian

    Great! Another simple quick game that needs no preparation and can be used as a last minute fun-filled filler! Thanks!
    I’d like to use it for practising months and am trying to figure out how to include Nov & Dec. I guess simply tell the kids they can put up a max of 6 fingers.

  2. Margit

    Great! I’m doing the brothers and sisters theme right now, so I would put up a boy with a girl and ask:
    Do you have any brothers or sisters.
    The boys hand is the number of brothers the girl’s hand is the number of sisters.
    This is great! Thanks.

  3. mido farid

    hi margit
    i didnt see ur comments fr long time
    u didnt like titanic , where is the shark and erase erase game?
    have you tried them?

  4. Suha

    Dear Richard,
    I am so grateful for your great efforts and the nice strategies plus, the wonderful games you provide us with. I try to apply them in the classroom with my third grade students.
    The last game I did with my ss was like (Turn-Toss:
    I started the game after revising action verbs by miming, ss try to guess what I am doing and form a present progressive sentence. If the student comes up with the correct verb and sentence, I throw him the ball and he comes to the front of the class taking my place to play. My ss loved it so much!

  5. Nena

    Thanks! great simple game..Where do you get all this game ideas Mido?…Your a like an erupting vulcano! Wow!
    I like Magit’s idea for brother and sisters as well!
    Have a nice day everyone!
    Nena

  6. LINES

    Good game, you also can use writen numbers in paper with the biggest ones.
    For the months and week days is grait to say them backwards ( December-November…)and if one lose, we have to begin again.
    Thank you very much.

  7. mido farid

    in fact
    im teaching in china fr about ten years
    i like kids soo much
    so every day i ve to get a nw game fr my classes
    so i got lots of ideas and games by myself
    coz i like Richard and genkienglish
    i ll give all i ve to genkienglish
    hope all of u enjoy them
    thanks

  8. Suha

    Many thanks to Mido, too, who inspires us with his nice games.
    Good luck to all members and the ones who are in charge of this great website.

  9. miriam kanekawa

    unique game and very useful..the children enjoyed it very much..

  10. Vince

    Great game. For Nov & Dec, this is what I did. one partner can only use one hand (four fingers but no thumb). the other partner will use both hands (eight fingers and no thumbs). So if both show all their fingers, that’d be Dec !! Thanks for the game.

  11. Jessica

    great game. you could also have flashcards with those numbers on them, and they would have to say the vocabulary word or a sentence instead of a month!

Comments are closed