hue knew? and cross-eyed

Apr 21, 2011

I found two new math games at DI the other day…gotta love thrift store finds that actually have all the playing pieces! We have played them at Math Alive! the last two weeks and they have been a huge hit, so now I will share them with y’all.

Hue Knew? is a great thinking game. It consists of 10 colored pegs and a gazillion cards that have each color name written in different colors. Two of the color names are written in the same color as its name and whomever grabs those pegs first scores a point. If you grab an incorrect point, you lose a point. On four of the cards, all the color names are correctly written in their same colors. On those cards, you must grab the black peg and if you do so first, you get two points. My students have loved playing this game and it was a hit here at home as well. Its amazing to me how my brain can play tricks on me and make me think I am reading the word brown in brown when it is really written in pink.

Cross-eyed is a fast (each game takes about 5 minutes), competitive, super-fun game. There is a stack of cards with a different pattern on each card and then each player has a stack of smaller cards that match the bigger cards. All the players race through their cards at the same time to see who can find a match to the big card first. As soon as that one is matched, you start on the one below it. At first, I couldn’t see that patterns at all, I just went cross-eyed, but after a few rounds I am much better at it and so are my students.

Both of these games are made by Mindware and while you might not find them at your local thrift store, I’m sure you can find them online.