I’ve said it many times and use it as a criterion for choosing games for my game nights … I LOVE games that have more than one level of play and/or more than one way to play.  Games aren’t cheap anymore and ones that focus on basic skills can be even more expensive.

So when I found Money Mart from Edupress, I knew this one would come with us to many game nights! There are two levels available, Grades 2-3 and Grades 4-5.  Each game box includes 200 cards covering  all four operations plus time, money, graphing, and fractions.  THAT was a surprise to me.  When I first saw the game I immediately thought it was a money game … period.  WRONG!  There’s some money involved, but students get practice in sooo much more than just money!

Each card in the box is labeled in the upper right hand corner with the targeted skill.  If you want your child/student to have practice in all areas, shuffle all the cards.  If you want to focus only on one skill (like multiplication), pull out all the cards labeled Multiplication.  You will have plenty of cards to play a game and the cards will have questions/problems on 3 different levels.  The levels of difficulty are differentiated in monetary values on the front side … $1.00 cards being the most challenging, .50 are medium difficulty, and .25 as the easiest.  Randomly lay out 9 cards of different monetary values, money side up.  Player then chooses which card they’d like to try to answer/solve to collect that amount of money.  Play continues, replacing the cards on the table from the draw pile, until a player has collected $5 worth of questions.

You could also easily play this game Jeopardy style, lining up cards in the 3 values and allowing the student to choose Multiplication for $1.00!  I’ve made a Jeopardy-type board before for a workshop I did years ago, using a tri-fold project board and library pockets to hold the questions and headers made from word strips or decorative cutouts.  Foldable, portable game for the whole class or for small groups.

And here’s the best part of this game … it’s only $11.99!  TWO HUNDRED cards, EIGHT skills targeted!  That’s a fantastic value!  And it doesn’t hurt if you can muster up your best Alex Trebek impression!  Enjoy!

Carol