Every Number Counts

Save your old phone books! In this activity, your child can use them to practice her math skills.

Every Number Counts

Required:

One or more phone books

Here's a game that answers the age-old question: What do I do with all the phone books I have lying around? Before you recycle them, ask your child to play a math game that requires their use.

Give your child the white pages, or, if you have a gaggle of kids, give them each a phone book. Then, say a number aloud (for instance, 34). See how quickly your child can find a telephone number with digits that add up to that number (for example, 555-6391). If your kids are younger, you might want to choose a lower number and ask them to use only the last four digits (in our example, they'd add up to 19). Or, if your kids are math pros, they might want to work with the phone number and area code.

See how many phone numbers your kids can find adding up to the total in a given time period (say, five minutes), or how long it takes a group of kids to find ten numbers that total the given amount. Or, for the most challenging game imaginable, see whether your children can find phone numbers that, when each of the numbers are multiplied, equals 6432!