4 Mathy Things You Can Get Anyone This Christmas

In my neck of the woods, it’s that time of year when we start pulling out the big, chunky sweaters. That always starts me thinking about the holidays, specifically Christmas, and what I’m going to get my kids. Every year, there’s this idea floating around on social media about limiting what you get your children to four things. Those four things are;

1. Something that they want
2. Something that they need
3. Something to wear and
4. Something to read

I love the idea, but I don’t like that it’s something to read. Why not something to math? In today’s vlog, I’m going to talk about four mathy things that you could get anyone for Christmas. I’m not trying to downplay the need for kids to read, but it just seems like we push reading, reading, reading so much more than we push math for our young kids. So, I want to challenge you a little bit to think about something outside the box and maybe bring some children or a teacher you know something mathy this year. Watch the video below OR read the transcript.

Logic & Board Games

My first type of gift is a logic or board games. It can be any kind of board game like Candy Land, or Sorry, games like these have mathy themes involved. Games like Wits & Wagers are also great. However, my personal recommendation is the Sum of Which. There are different versions of Sum of Which and I was lucky enough to have one sent to me. So, this is an endorsement of a product that you can go buy, but anything that I’m sharing in this video are things that I personally love.

In the video above (starting at 2:05), I show you a little clip of my Kindergarten kiddo and his second-grade sister playing it. The Kindergarten kiddo was getting a little bit of help from my Mom, his Grandma, as we were playing.

There’s so much thinking involved with Sum of Which. It goes beyond just the roll the dice or spin and skip that many spaces on the game board. Sum of Which has so many parts involved and it’s very cool.

That version of the game was a prototype, so it looks a little different than the ones that are available now, but this one was the Sum of Which is 10. There’s also a version with fractions, where the Sum of Which is a 1 and they try to put tiles on the board so the sum of those tiles creates 1. That’s the general gist of the game, but there’s some strategy involved because you can decide where you’re going to place them and which ones you’re going to use to get the most points.

Cards & Dice

My second type of gift, that I want to encourage you to get someone this year, is cards and dice. Just a normal deck of cards and a set of dice can provide so much math activity. I just love being able to sit down and play a game with my family. I grew up in a game-playing family, we played all kinds of dice games and card games from Go Fish all the way up to Gin Rummy and even more complicated ones now, like Hand and Foot.

I want to encourage you to think outside the box when it pertains to a regular deck of cards. I created a deck of cards called Savvy Subitizing.

They can replace your deck of cards for any game that you normally play with a deck of cards. The cool part about this deck is that it shows lots of different versions of a number. They have number zero through ten and it shows the digit, tally marks, dot patterns, the rekenrek, the hand pattern, finger patterns and the 10 frame. This allows kids to get lots of different visual pictures of an amount beyond just the digit. So, any game that you play like Go Fish become so much more fun with this deck of cards, because it challenges kids to think any number in lots of different ways and builds visual pictures along with it.

Spatial Reasoning Toys (blocks, puzzles)

My third type of mathy gift is getting some kind of spacial reasoning toy. Spatial ability has a lot of research connecting it to how kids perform in mathematics. If kids have good spatial reasoning, they perform better in mathematics. There are multiple reasons why, but it’s that ability to hold something in your mind and be able to visualize and manipulate it, that you’re building with kids.

Puzzles are a great spatial ability type of activity and it can be any kind of puzzle that you get kids. if you have young children, my favorite toy to get is the shape sorter toy, where you put the star in the star hole and the circle in the circle hole, those kinds of toys. If you’re looking for something that is a game and also builds spatial abilities, one of my favorites is Blokus.

Blokus is a wonderful game that your kids will have fun playing. You will have fun playing it or if you get it for a teacher, they will love to have it as part of a center in their classroom.

Books

The last type of activity I want to encourage you to think about, that would make a great Christmas gift, is books! I know, the fourth one was to read, but there are tons of mathy books, that we can get for our children that would relate to both reading and mathematics. Yes, they are both super important, but my job is to have you think about ways to bring mathematics into kids’ lives. So, my role here is to share with you some of my favorite mathy books.

There are just way too many to mention here, so the freebie, that’s associated with this vlog is linked to the things that I’ve mentioned already, but a list of my top children’s books, that are math-related.

If you don’t know Greg Tang, anything by him is just fabulous.The Grapes of Math has been one of my personal favorites.

Then this is also a great book for older kids called, If You Hopped Like A Frog, that talks about how far would you be able to hop, if you could hop like a frog, things like that.

So, our four things to get your kids or teachers were; get logic or board games, get cards and dice (my personal favorite are my cards that I’ve created), get them some spacial reasoning toys like Blocks and puzzles, and get children’s books that incorporate math concepts into the stories.

I hope that this helps you build math minds and don’t forget to download the whole list of my favorite mathy books, that you could get a child for this Christmas.