It was a seriously real life math game weekend over here! We had 3 of them show up in the mail, and we played them all this weekend!! There was Grocery Cart on Friday. Budget on Saturday and Sunday we sat down and played Discount!
There is a LOT of math practice with Discount. It’s no secret we’ve struggled with finding the right math program. We’ve used many different programs, and with each one we’ve learned something, usually that it wasn’t a good fit. 🙂 We thought we were going to love Teaching Textbooks, but turns out a spiral program is NOT what works best for the kiddo. We recently started using CTC Math. I worried a little bit about starting a new math program so late in the year. The good news was though, when I ordered it through Homeschool Buyers Coop I got an extra 6 months added onto my subscription, which will take us all the way through the end of next year. YAY!!
Anyway, I was a little concerned when I looked through the math that was involved in Discount. There is turning percentages into decimals, turning fractions into decimals, multiplying decimals, and of course addition and subtraction. Some of those topics definitely needed a bit of reviewing before we jumped in. This is another thing I love about CTC Math, you have access to all grade levels. We can easily just search a topic we need to review, and go to the lesson no matter what grade level that topic was originally covered. This is definitely a bonus for us.
So, we reviewed some math skills and then cracked open the box. 🙂
How to play Discount:
Each person starts off with a pre-determined amount of money and a financial register to track your spending. The game suggested $2000 and that’s what we went with. If you have frugal kids you might make sure they understand the point of the game is to spend money (and save in the process). We got to nearly the end of the game and my sale girl had barely spent any money because she wasn’t landing on “big enough savings”. 🙂 This kiddo buys nothing for less than 40% off lol. We had a chat about how you end up saving more money with a 10% discount off a high ticket item than you do on 40% off a low ticket item. I think she was a little stunned by that. 😀
You spin the spinner and you’ll land on a discount. The color your spinner lands on tells you what category card you’ll take, furniture, clothing, appliances. You draw a card, and it will tell you what you’re buying. Then you figure out the savings based on the percentage you landed on. Then you figure out how much the actual cost of the item is and pay the bank for your item. You then record all this information on your financial register.
To win the game you must save the most money AND (this is a biggie and why I lost the game lol) your financial register must be 100% accurate. At the end of the game you’ll add up how much you saved. You will also add up your total sale price spent and add it to what you’ve got left in your bank. These numbers should equal the amount of money you started the game with. Somehow… (ugh) I was $20 off on my financial register. I saved way more money than Hanna through the game, but my mistake cost me the win. Let me tell you how excited Hanna was about that!! I can also tell you that having her math add up really really helped in her math confidence.
I’m not going to lie, unless you use calculators (which during game play kind of defeated the purpose for us), there is going to be a LOT of math. There was some complaining, a couple “I hate maths” in the mix, but in the end… she exclaimed this was her favorite game of the three. <3 At the beginning of the game there was some struggling with the math, but by the end of the game she was doing the math without issue. I am certain this is the most “practice problems” I’ve ever gotten her to do in her life. 🙂
We really really liked this game a lot. I think Grocery Cart is still my favorite, but this was a very close second. I like how each of the games we got this week have focused on a different type of math, and had a lot of math practice in them, but it didn’t really feel like “doing math”. Even though you are totally writing out math problems and doing them lol. I guess that’s the magic of games. Oh speaking of “doing the math”, make sure you’ve got some scratch paper around… you’re definitely going to need it.
All in all this was a super fun game. We had no troubles with it. There was plenty of money. The cards made sense, and were realistically priced. Again, make sure the kiddos understand at the beginning the goal is to spend and save money. If they hoard their money they won’t win the game. 🙂 You’ve got to spend money to save it in this game.
Update: This has become one of our favorite go to games. It seems to get more fun each time (and the math gets easier each time too!). This is definitely a game we recommend. You can grab Discount on Amazon here.
Your turn! What’s your favorite real life math game? Stop over to my private facebook group Secular Relaxed-Eclectic Homeschooling with Older Kids and tell us all about it. 🙂 You’ll find we’ve got quite a few gameschooling members. 🙂
Cool math game. Thank you for sharing.