Last year my students had a great time playing a pumpkin concentration game in October. I copied the cards on to orange card stock and had kids work in pairs to cut them out. They were essentially prepping their own set of cards to play with.
The cards I had at the time were also designed to reinforce number writing skills. A dotted line version of each number, 1-12, was on the cards. So the kids had to trace the numbers before cutting the cards out.
The game is played like a regular Memory or Concentration game. All the cards are mixed up and turned face down, organized neatly into rows. One player flips two cards, but does not pick them up. If they are a match, that player picks both cards up and keeps them. If they are not a match, they flip them back over, leaving them in the same spot. In this way the children begin to learn where certain cards are on the board (as long as they are paying attention and can remember where they are hidden!) Game play continues until all cards have been paired up and collected. The player with the most matches wins.
I liked this version of the game, but I wanted to change the focus slightly. We have been working with ten frames, so I decided to make a ten frame version of pumpkin concentration. In this game, instead of matching two identical cards, a match happens when the written number and the corresponding ten frame are turned up together.
I want my students to begin to have mental images of numbers that correspond to the quantities they represent. Ten frames are great for this, as they are visual representations that are very organized and structured. This version of the concentration game helps students to practice counting the dots on the ten frames (and hopefully learning to count by tens and ones, rather than by ones each time!)
If you would like to download this game, just click here. It is yours for FREE! Enjoy.
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