MathDice Is Awesome!
Bill Ritchie is CEO and co-founder of ThinkFun Inc.

Students play in a MathDice Tournament.

I love MathDice. It makes sense that I do... MathDice was invented by my son Sam, when he was a sixth grader no less, for a school project. I played it with him and also with my son Mike, a third grader at the time. It took Mike about 15 minutes to learn exponents by playing this game. Why? Because he wanted to beat me!

This was 10 years ago. Since that time, I have personally brought this game into dozens of elementary schools, teaching the game, running workshops, and organizing tournaments around the Washington, DC region. ThinkFun has partnered with Arlington County, Virginia to help run a MathDice Tournament for the past five years, and last spring, 19 of the county’s 22 elementary schools participated. Why? Because MathDice does an incredible job of teaching number facts, and it is really, really fun for kids to play.

We are now bringing MathDice into our Education program. We're introducing the game with this newsletter, and over the next weeks and months we will be adding new ideas onto our website. I encourage you to give this game a try with your students... it's only $10 to get started! We'll be writing more about MathDice in coming weeks, and once you see the potential I am sure you and your students will be ready for more!

Count on Fun with MathDice
Tanya Thompson is the Director of Education Programs at ThinkFun Inc.

MathDice is a natural fit into everyone's classroom, and the benefits to your students are numerous. While several specific benefits are mentioned below, I also encourage you to read "The Math behind Math Dice" written by Tom Rowan. We made available this article and the other resources mentioned below for a limited time on a special MathDice page for teachers on the ThinkFun Web site.

MathDice teaches fundamental math facts and will improve your students' mental math skills. Playing MathDice reinforces and strengthens students' ability to compute exponents, multiply, divide, add and subtract, and they have fun doing it! As teachers, we love an environment where our students are learning and they don't even know it!

Having been a teacher myself, I know how busy teachers are and how too many times we reinvent the wheel! With this in mind, we have created a variety of resources to make your life easier. We have developed a one-page How to Play Math Dice sheet that outlines the instructions and a How to Play Overhead Set that you can print out on transparencies and work through with your entire class.

We have also developed four worksheet Challenge Sets, each designed around a set of specific operations so you can select the most appropriate one for your students. These worksheets are designed so that students create written equations, and this provides a wonderful opportunity to reinforce Order of Operations.

Finally, for those of you who are really ambitious, we present the MathDice Tournament. We invite you to scroll through the photos of a past Tournament, and take a look at the provided rules for competitive Tournament Play.

Visit the special MathDice page for teachers for these resources. I hope you love MathDice, and I want to hear what you think. Please feel free to contact me at tthompson@thinkfun.com. Below is an incredible story from a wonderful teacher from Montana, Echo Allison, who used last week's offering on Chocolate Fix in her classroom! Enjoy!

A Chocolate Fix Success Story
Echo Allison is a Gifted and Talented Resource Teacher in Montana.

Chocolate Fix makes learning sweet.

I was first introduced to Chocolate Fix during my visit to the ThinkFun office early this summer. I came home to Montana excited about the new game, and my seven year old son, Raymond, was thrilled and started playing with enthusiasm.

As a teacher with 17 years of experience, I couldn't wait to bring Chocolate Fix into my classroom. When I used the Chocolate Fix lesson plan available through the last issue of Classroom Connection to introduce the idea of "Break Into Smaller Problems," the response was just as enthusiastic! The fourth and fifth graders loved getting to solve the 8 Challenges using paper and pencil, and I loved that they used their thinking skills to show their combinations and solutions. There is no mystery as to why ThinkFun games are powerful educational tools.

When students began playing the actual Chocolate Fix game, it was a deliciously delightful learning experience!