DS & DD have both been stuck in the house with ear infections for almost a month. With cold damp air outside, they have not been coming out to do much of the farm chores with me. To help them still feel like they are part of things, I invented a fun game every afternoon when I come in from doing the afternoon farm chores. I started asking the kids a math problem to figure out how many eggs the chickens laid that day. They are competitive with one another so it is usually a race to see who can solve my Eggy Math problem first.

Both DS and DD can do simple addition so that is the type of problem that I give them. The chickens lay both brown and green eggs so my questions are usually something like “I collected 6 brown eggs and 8 green eggs. How many eggs did I collect?” Sometimes I will also ask something like “I have 1 dozen eggs in this carton. Remember that 1 dozen is 12 eggs. I have 4 more in my hand. How many eggs did I get today?”

As the kids’ math competence grows, I can expand this to subtraction. (DS can do basic subtraction in his head but DD still has a little trouble with it. I want to keep our Eggy Math game fair.) “I got 15 eggs yesterday and only 11 today. How many more did I get yesterday?” I can also expand it to fractions. “I collected 14 eggs today and 7 were green. What fraction of the eggs was green?” or “I collected 15 eggs today and we have 22 hens. What fraction of the chickens did not lay an egg today?”

I love math, and so do the kids. Eggy Math teaches them to solve word problems and mental math at the same time!