Today I made my own set of ‘Times Tables Jenga’. I was in Smyths last Friday picking up a birthday present when I wandered to the games aisle. I’ve been looking at buying Jenga for a while to make different games for use in the classroom but thought it was a bit too expensive. So when I saw the alternative Timberr for only €6.99 I was delighted.
I bought two sets with 48 ‘blocks’ in each set. Unfortunately I made 2 mistakes which meant 2 blocks ended up in the bin so I was left with 94 altogether. I used 7 blocks for each times table covering 0x___ to 12x ___. I wanted a separate set for each times tables so the blocks could be used on their own or by combining two or more different sets depending on the children’s ability. I used a different colour Sharpie for each set to make it easy to know which is which.
I’ve stored them in this tub from Ikea (think it was €1).
How to play
- Choose which times tables you’ll be practising. We focused on x2, x5 and x10.
- Build the tower exactly like Jenga. (3 blocks horizontal, 3 blocks vertical on top and so on.)
- Children then try to take a block out without touching any other blocks or knocking down the tower.
- When they take the block out – they answer the times tables question on both sides.
- If they get the question right – they keep the block.
- If they get the question wrong – the block is placed on top of the tower.
- The game ends when the tower is knocked or after x amount of minutes.
- The winner is the player with the most blocks at the end.
I think I’ll buy some more sets of Timberr and use them for spellings/ reading/ other maths areas. (I had some blocks left so used these for doubles and near doubles).
