Would You Rather?

Would you rather do a worksheet or play a game in school? It does not matter what grade you are in, everyone would probably rather play the games. Hands on activities seem to benefit students, more than worksheets. Most of the time you do not realize you are learning if you are doing something fun. In my practicum in a kindergarten classroom we are doing math games and I am able to see how much the kids enjoy them while learning math.

Today I was playing the game "Sneaky Snake" with a group of students. In this game each player has 12 spaces numbered 1-12 that they are trying to fill up. You roll 2 dice at the same time, count (or add) the number of dots on the two dice and you put a chip on that number. You can see by the picture what the game looks like.   

The first boy rolled and got two 6s. One student said "thats 12!" The boy who rolled the 6s was not sure, so he counted the dots, and learned that it was 12. The game continued on and every time someone got two 6s everyone knew the answer was going to be 12. The same thing happened with getting the number 9. Someone rolled a 5 and a 4, we all counted the dots together and learned that the total was 9. From that point on they all knew what  5 and 4 made without having to count the dots. I was amazed that these kindergarteners were picking up on adding so easily.

If I had just told the students 5+4=9, they more then likely would not have remembered. Since the students were actually engaging and having to figure the things out on their own, they started learning addition. This shows that hands on activities are very beneficial and the students do not even realize they are learning. I feel like it can be beneficial in any classroom to do an activity instead of a worksheet to learn new information.