Fill it Up

Fill it Up
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This is another game that gives children experiences combining numbers and seeing that 7 can be made in many different ways. Please check out the commentary on Families Affair for more information about why this is so important.

Some delicious games to play:

Alien Invasion: Use oyster crackers as space ships. Everyone puts 6 crackers in their hand and one person starts a story: "There were 6 spaceships sailing around space. Suddenly, a giant space squid comes and eats two of them." (Everyone eats two of the crackers.) "How many spaceships are left?" Take turns continuing the story with tales of reinforcements joining the remaining ships and more catastrophes that lead to removing ships from the story (aka eating crackers!).

Donut shop: Use Cheerios to make up similar stories about adventures in a donut shop.

Fishies: Use goldfish shaped crackers to tell of the adventures in the ocean or a lake.

Consider this variation to Fill it Up for some more experience seeing what makes up numbers:

Start with 2 columns of tiles. Try different numbers of tiles in the columns. Roll the die to remove tiles from one column. The first player to remove all their tiles on exact rolls, wins. That means if you have two tiles left in one column and one tile left in the other, you have to roll a 1 and a 2 or three 1s to win.