Elisa and I love games. Okay, well, I love games and Elisa puts up with them. However, one game that Elisa actually enjoys is Yahtzee. We've been waiting for our kids to get older in order be able to play with them, but it suddenly dawned on us that maybe we could just invent our own version. Behold, Tot-zee!
The rules are basically the same as Yahtzee. Roll five dice up to three times and try to get as many of the same number as possible, except we've eliminated all the two-of-a-kind, full-house, etc., so the game only takes 6 turns. Look at our scorecard and it should be self-explanatory.
The great thing is, regular dice (with dots) help teach math in terms of visual groups. The kids get practice with addition and multiplication by using the "groups of" approach, i.e., "you have three groups of two which is six." (2+2+2=6 or 3x2=6) We had our kids use crayons to color in the scorecard for easy visual reference.
I think they actually make a Yahtzee, Jr. game, but it uses pictures (typically of some kind of licensed character) instead of numbers, which defeats the purpose. However, I would recommend the age of our version be 4 years and up. (Jack didn't make it past the second turn!)
Below are some images of our completed scorecards. (Cason won!) Have fun!
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