GOT-IT!

Last year I purchased a pile of second-hand games from a South African, come New Zealander homeschooler. Her children had all grown up and she was moving and downsizing. Bless her heart she gave us a really good deal on a lot of games and puzzled and showered the girls with lots of lovely bits and bobs that she didn't want or need.

I came home with my giant haul, looked at it all, we played the easiest ones and then they were all popped into the games cupboard. Well this week I decided to pull out one of the board games and have a look at it and WOW, WOW, WOW... talk about maths in action!

Now before I go on I must warn you that I have been trying to see where you an obtain the game from and can't seem to locate it. It is possibly an old game but I have emailed the supplier that I found on the box and will see what I can find out because peeps it is so worth having this game in the games cupboard!

The Game is called GOT-IT! and appears to have been made by Toy and Puzzle World in South Africa and is for ages 6 - 99. It is a great game for practicing numeracy skills and challenges you in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

There are three levels of difficulty, 6 and up (blue challenge cards), 9 and up (pink challenge cards) and 11 and up (green challenge cards).

Basically you move around the board collecting number cards  (IE land on a 7 pick up a 7 card) and  the first player to get the exact number required on the challenge card, or be the closest to it wins. For instance the blue cards are only addition or subtraction and might say, "Add your numbers together to get to: 21" ... you move around the board and try and get as close to 21 as you can. You can call stay if you are quite close and don't want to chance blowing it by landing on another big number. Bit like 21 really and it's a bit of a laugh watching your competition deciding whether to chance throwing again.

The pink challenge cards (which give you a combination of two out of the four methods to use) might say "By subtracting or dividing your numbers from 120 or by using a combination of subtraction and division to get to 20". At this level you will need a piece of paper to work out different combinations of the numbers that you pick up, in order to get the answer. When you yell GOT-IT you have to prove how you came to the answer. IE. if I picked up a 5 and then a 4, I could say 120 / 5 = 24 - 4 = 20. If I picked up a 6 I could say 120 / 6 = 20 and so on.

With the green cards you have the choice of using the whole four methods (+, -, /, x) ... heaven help me, you have to think with that one so I have been dodging that level. Makes my head hurt just to think about it! They even suggest other mathematical processes could be incorporated at this advanced level, IE square roots. This level might be good for teams which they do recommend too. Apparently these people must be a hoot at parties as they suggest party challenges, IE battle of the sexes or family against family; they obviously need to get out more. "Seriously, you'd like us to come over for a math game? Well yeah sure, that just sounds dandy!"

Anyway I though I would share this "choice" (an old Kiwi word meaning awesome) math game that you may never ever find because, I want you all to be "totes jealous", but seriously if you can ever get your hands on one, it is a really good living math resource.