Spot It!

Get used to seeing multiplication facts, the Prime Colours way with this game. Play this for 10 minutes a day to colour your times tables practice. Start just playing with colours showing to get the hang of choosing the cards. When you can confidently find two cards that match the centre card, try to work out the number on the centre card by looking at the two cards you've chosen. Also see if you can spot more than one pair to match with the centre card.

As you get more confident, try turning some of the base number cards (those on the outside) to show the numbers and see if you can play it that way round. Keep on until you can play with the base numbers showing a number and the centre a colour

Quick Start

What you need to play

  • 1 pack of cards
  • Optional White Background card

Set Up

Set up

Separate the cards so that you have all of the base cards (these are cards that are 12 or less not including zero or 1) and a pile of cards that are more than 12. Lay the base cards in a circle or rectangle and place the pile of higher numbered cards in the middle.

Alternative ways to set up the game include:

  1. Laying all cards with one disk down on the number side (to help you recall them more fluently.)
  2. Turning the centre pack over so that it shows numbers instead

How to Play

How to Play

Once cards are laid out, You are ready to play. Players take turns to try for a card. In each round, the game is played like this:

  1. The player picks two base cards which have the same combination of disks and brings them out of the circle. If you like, you can go further to practise recalling maths facts or (especially for very young children) you can end the go here.
  2. She then turns the cards over to reveal the numbers. She will use these numbers to see if she can determine the number on the card in the pack.
  3. If the player get the card correct, then take it out of the pack. If not, she wins that card. Give that card to the player.
  4. Players win when they have:
    • Won 3 cards - they can practise with those cards to help their memory for next time
    • They get through 10 rounds in a row and get them all right

What maths are we practising?

We are hard wired to understand multiplication perhaps more than addition. But the process of learning to count and add seems to change that and we can see the world in terms of addition. We then tend to see multiplication as an extension of addition. The importance of this game lies in:

  1. practising and recognising multiplication as an operation between two numbers. By getting used to playing, you will also get used to combining two numbers as a multiplication
  2. Practise multiplication by first examining prime factors, and treating the multiplication as a combining of these factors (players don't need to know definitions of these. They will experience them while playing). This will be really helpful when learning algebra.

The overall goal of this first phase of Prime Colours is to fluently know all of the cards by sight. This game introduces the multiplicative focus. Players quickly realise that it is always multiplication that is needed to find the numbers. They also start remembering the base numbers, which will start to open this system up for them.