We at Aavishkaar are in love with developing puzzles and games. We strive to make all our sessions thinking and doing sessions where students have to do most of the work. We develop tasks that need individual think time and small group discussions that expects kids to present their ideas to each other and justify them. They have to describe their thinking process and answer the whys.
We also continuously look for thinking games in need of students. And when we find a good game we do make it a part of our game family. One such game is “Alien Numbers” by Dan Finkel. Its a grid of numbers which have a ring of colors around them. Students have to decipher what do these colors mean. It encourages students to think deeply about numbers, and promises to be hours of fun! You wanna try it? Here you go…
This is a lovely activity. I came across a version of this first from Jerry Burkhart, who uses a worksheet like this… He says students use this over the year, to relate these ideas to other topics. It’s a wonderful way to learn about primes and prime factorisation. I am sure there are many other ways to use this that I haven’t thought about.
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