My boys are big LEGO fans so I love using them to sneak in some reading and math practice when I can. This LEGO Game: Race to Twenty was a low prep, fun way to help Big Brother {4.5} work on those tricky teen numbers.
For more number fun, check out our Number Formation Pack, too!
Getting Ready
I pulled out ten blue DUPLOS and ten green ones. I stuck them together in towers and used a Vis-a-vis marker to write the numbers 1-10 on the blue DUPLOS and 11-20 on the green ones. {Writing with a Vis-a-vis let me easily wash away the numbers when we were finished.}
The LEGO Game
I grabbed a dice and invited my son to join me. We read the numbers out loud together as I pointed to each DUPLO. Then I placed both towers side by side and asked him what he noticed about the digits on the right side of the green blocks.
“Hmmm…” he said and gave a long pause. “Oh! They’re the same as the ones on the blue blocks.”
“Right!” I said. “The digits on the right side are called {ones}. They tell us how many green blocks are in our tower. So the number 16 means one blue tower of ten DUPLOS plus 6 green DUPLOS. Each time we add another green DUPLO, the digit gets one bigger. See?! SIXteen, SEVENteen, EIGHTeen…”
I broke apart the blocks, mixed them up and invited my son to stick them back together in the right order.
When he stuck 13 next to 15, I pointed to the one’s place. He quickly noticed the mistake and added 14 between the two blocks. Once both towers were built, I gave him the dice and told him that we were going to see how quickly he could build one long tower with all twenty DUPLOS. Each time he rolled the die, he added that number of blocks.
As my son raced to build his tower of twenty, he was hard at work practicing teen numbers and beginning addition – important math skills he’ll use in kindergarten later.
More Math Fun
Our Number Formation Pack keeps the math fun going! Download it now in our shop!
Love this idea! I have a question…..mathematically, shouldn’t the numbers start with 1 at the bottom, increasing as they go up to reinforce the concept of greater and less than?
Great question, Jacki!! I think either approach would work well. I actually went back and forth about this one too and ultimately decided that {similar to the organization of a hundreds chart} I would have my son place one at the top and two below it just like we read the words at the top of a page and then move to the next line.
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