Summer Math Fun! Beach Bump (Math Center Game)

(5 Years)

Have you ever played Bump?  I've not only never played it, I have never even heard of Bump before. It's so much fun.  We just played our first game of Bump and they loved it!  You can grab the template for FREE by going to Mary's Guided Math blog, she linked it from Denise at SunnyDays.

The directions are on the templates for you- the object is to be the first player to have ten spaces with your marker/game piece on top.  Your opponent can BUMP you from a space, by placing her game piece on top of yours (there is a maximum of one bump per space).

Our game lasted for about ten minutes - that's ten minutes of math practice with no workbooks, no pencils, no mention of "work".  I brought out the abacus just in case they wanted to use that to calculate the sum.  They chose to rely on the facts that they already memorized, or by counting the dots or by using their fingers.

They picked up on the concept of the game really quickly.  Little Miss always seemed to want to BUMP her brother from a space, rather than taking an open space (my little smarty pants).  Once Wild One caught onto his sister's strategy, he started to do the same thing.  Twins!  Anyway, they really liked the back and forth- who's going to win.  They are very competitive.

Towards the end of the game, when we only had two more spaces to go, Wild One started getting antsy.  He hung in there to finish the game, but I knew we needed to end this soon or else they wouldn't want to play again.  Keep it fun, remember learning through play is the best way (well, for us).

It was a close game 10 points to 8 points.  Their review of the game:
Little Miss - "I really liked the bumping part."
Wild One - "It was amazing that my sister won."

Thank you Denise and Mary for sharing this with us!  We are going to add this to our centers for the summer.  We used your blank template to create a Bump game board using word form for the next time we play.  Thank you again!