Age: 4+ (box says 5+)
Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 20 Minutes
Category: Board, Educational
Gameschool Area: Math
Price: $15.50 at RainbowResource.com
Publisher: Learning Resources
Sum Swamp is my #1 recommendation for early elementary math.
It’s a simple game, but the dice, the Swamp theme and adorable little rubber playing pieces make this game a favorite with my younger kids.
We play this game several times each week, several times each day. These little buddies really just can’t get enough of it, and it is teaching them 0-12 addition and subtraction with ZERO effort, tears, frustration, or complaining. How amazing is that?!? THAT, my friends, is the power of gameschooling.
It’s a basic board game:
- roll the dice
- follow the operation
- move forward or backward on the game board
There are special spaces that allow you to move forward or backward extra times, and a maddening loop that can only be exited if a player lands exactly on the exit spot. Sometimes this game can last a long time waiting for somebody to finally get out, but that just increases its appeal.
For my new counters, this game is giving them lots of good practice and it delights them to know something their big brothers know.
When my 4 year old twins play together they just roll the green number dice without the operations dice and just move forward the number of spaces shown on each dice. But when they play with brothers, the brothers help them with adding. I’m going to be out of a teaching job here pretty soon… my twins have plenty of older brothers to teach them!
This really is a delightful math game, one of our very favorites!
