Can a preschool board game boost mathematics skills?

Studies advise the answer is aye…if the game has these particular features.

© 2008 – 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

Yous might non expect much from a preschool board game. Players coil die, or spin a spinner, and move their game tokens around a board.

Only when a young child plays a number-based board game, something exciting tin can happen. If the game requires the child to move her game token forth an ascending sequence of numbered spaces — and speak these numbers out loud as she moves — she can gain a crucial sense of the number line.

She can develop an intuitive appreciation for "how much" dissimilar numbers represent. A feeling for numbers gets encoded in the brain.

That bodes well for a child's long-term prospects. Studies show that early "number sense" predicts long-term achievement in mathematics. The stronger a youngster'due south mathematical intuitions about quantity and the number line, the improve he performs on mathematics tests in primary and middle school (Laski and Siegler et al 2013).

For example, when David Geary tracked kids over the course of several years, he found that outset graders were more probable to develop strong math skills if they were good at number line estimation — a task that requires kids to signal where, approximately, a given number should announced on a number line (Geary et al 2011).

The effect remained even afterward Geary held other factors — like IQ examination scores — abiding, suggesting that the results weren't only the reflection of differences in full general power (Geary et al 2011).

So at that place's reason to remember that the right game will help children develop stiff mathematical skills in the long-term. Simply how does information technology piece of work, and what can adults do to make sure kids reap bigger benefits? Let's take a closer look.

Children who play board games possess better math skills

In 2008, Neetha Ramani and Robert Siegler asked preschoolers to name all the board games they had ever played.

They as well asked the kids to name all the dissimilar places they'd played the games (for case, at dwelling house, at schoolhouse, or at a friend'due south domicile). And the researchers uncovered this pattern:

The more board games that a child named, the better his performance in four areas:

• Numeral identification
• Counting
• Number line estimation (in which a child is asked to mark the location of a number on a line)
• Numerical magnitude comparing (in which a child is asked to choose the greater of two numbers)

The same relationship was found for the number of settings in which kids played board games. Kids who played board games in multiple locations (e.g., their own dwelling and the home of a friend) performed improve on all four math tasks.

Similar results were associated with video games and carte du jour games, but to a much bottom degree. Kids who played more video games or card games performed better in only one of the iv areas of mathematical knowledge (Ramani and Seigler 2008).

Of grade, correlation doesn't bear witness causation. Board game experience might be linked with mathematical performance due to confounding factors. For instance, children who play board games might tend to come up from more affluent families, which would provide them with other advantages.

But Siegler and Ramani noted that certain board games seem tailor-made to teach mathematical concepts.

For case, the opens in a new windowChutes and Ladders Game requires players to move their game tokens through a series of consecutively-numbered spaces. The game board is substantially a number line, and children who play the game go to feel magnitude in a hands-on, concrete way.

• Spaces marked with college numbers are physically farther along the number line.
• Moving your token to these more distant locations requires more moves.
• It takes more than fourth dimension to attain spaces with higher number values.

If children count out loud — speaking the numbers on the lath as they move — they may also pay more attention to ordered human relationship between these numbers.

And so it makes sense that a game similar this could assistance children develop their mathematical intuitions. And the researchers found additional correlations to support their hunch:

Children who reported playing Chutes and Ladders were better at identifying numerals and interpreting number lines. They were also less likely to make mistakes during counting.

Putting information technology to the test: Tin can playing a game really help children develop meliorate number sense?

To observe out, Ramani and Siegler created their own, simplified, lath games, and randomly assigned preschoolers to participate in 1 of two training programs.

i. Half the children played a mathematical board game — a simple race-to-the-terminate where players took turns moving their tokens forth a series of 20, consecutively-numbered squares.

For each motility, these children were also instructed to "count on" from whatever number their token started from. Thus, if a player began a plow with his token on a space marked "7," he would move his token forward the required number of spaces while counting aloud: "eight…ix…10…"

two. The other half were assigned to play a similar race-to-the-finish game that differed in only one respect: The game board squares varied by colour instead of number.

The programs lasted simply ii weeks, and consisted of but iv game sessions of 15-20 minutes. But that was enough to brand a difference.

Compared with their baseline skills before starting the intervention,color-based preschool board game showed no comeback. By dissimilarity, children who played the math-based preschool board game improved in all four skill areas assessed — numeral identification, counting, number line interpretation, and numerical magnitude comparing.

Moreover, the gains were long-lasting. When the aforementioned kids were tested nine weeks afterwards, they even so showed superior math skills (Ramani and Siegler 2008).

The importance of "counting on" — don't skip it!

Ramani and Siegler accept replicated the outcome with eye income children, and researchers working independently in Scotland have obtained like results (Ramani and Siegler 2011; Whyte and Bull 2008).

But non every numerical board game has been linked with similarly impressive gains, and Robert Siegler has a possible caption. In studies where kids showed less extensive improvement, they weren't required to "count on."

Siegler thinks that's important because "counting on" forces kids to have note of the numbers printed on the board.

Without this requirement, the kid who has to movement her token 3 spaces frontward from the "7" infinite might only do it by counting "one,2,3," and pay little attending to the fact that she's moved forth the number line from 7 to 10. What he doesn't notice, he won't encode. He's merely focused on counting from ane to 3, and misses the bigger lesson.

In back up of this thought, Siegler and Elida Laski have shown that kindergartners assigned to play a number board game were more than likely to benefit when they were coached to "count on." The researchers created an expanded version of the original number game, 1 that featured 100 spaces instead of 20. So they assigned 42 kindergartners to play the game in one of two means.

• Half the children were told to count from 1, meaning that they counted aloud from i until they had moved their token forward the required number of spaces. Under this condition, kids were expected to pay less attending to the numbers on the board, and therefore learn less.

• The other half of the kids were instructed to count on, and thus expected to acquire more.

The children played the game viii times over the course of iii weeks. They were given mathematics tests at the end of the study, and the results were compared with their baseline scores. Researchers also monitored progress during the report, and the difference betwixt groups was substantial.

The kids who had "counted on" experienced impressive improvements in numeral identification, number line estimation, and the ability to count from numbers other than one. And these improvements were roughly twice every bit big every bit the gains observed in the children who had counted from one (Laski and Siegler 2014).

How to find the right preschool lath game

Siegler and his colleagues make a compelling example. The next question is: What lath games are most probable to benefit your child?

The research suggests that Chutes and Ladders might assist kids learn about the relative magnitude of numbers, merely this game typically features numbers up to 100, and the rules are more complicated than the game created by Ramani and Siegler.

So if your child is simply commencement to larn to count, it makes sense to commencement with the same game that the researchers used in their experiments. For details,  run into this article about creating your own version of their opens in a new window preschool board game, as well as step-by-footstep instructions for creating a preschool card game that has besides been demonstrated to boost children'due south math skills.

You might also be interested in this guide to opens in a new windowpreschool math activities (which includes some number games) and my research-based guide to board games for kids.

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References: Math skills and the preschool lath game

Dehaene S. 1997. The number sense: How the listen creates mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Duncan GJ, Dowsett CJ, Claessens A, Magnuson K, et al. 2007. School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology 43(6): 1428-1446.

Geary DC. 2006. Development of mathematical agreement. In: W. Damon and RM Lerner (eds), Handbook of kid psychology, V. ii: Knowledge, perception, and linguistic communication. 6th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Geary DC, Bow-Thomas CC and Yoa Y. 1992. Counting cognition and skill in cognitive improver: A comparison of normal and mathematically disabled children. Journal of Exp Psych 54(3): 372-391.

Laski EV and Siegler RS. 2014. Learning from number board games: y'all learn what you encode. Dev Psychol. 50(3):853-64.

Ramani GB and Siegler RS. 2008. Promoting broad and stable improvements in low-income children'southward numerical noesis through playing with number board games. Child Development 79(ii):375-394.

Siegler RS, 1988. Strategy choice procedures and the development of multiplication skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 117: 258-275.

Whyte JC and Bull R. 2008. Number games, magnitude representation, and bones number skills in preschoolers. Developmental Psychology 44(2):588-96.

Content last modified 7/17

Images of children playing games together by the Dreamhamar project, Ecosistema Urbano, opens in a new windowChristoffer Horsfjord Nilsen / flickr

image of preschool male child listening / wikimedia commons

Image of boy playing Candyland by opens in a new windowQuinn Dombrowski / flickr

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