Number Match On the screen Ideas • Play to beat the Puzzler and set the Numberjack free. What is the highest level you can manage? • With some children you could play in pairs so that one person does the counting and tells the other what number to click. Take turns at doing the two different jobs.  • Make it harder for yourself by shouting out the number as well as clicking it.  • At higher levels, where the number is sometimes split into two smaller groups, talk about how you might use those groups to find out how many there are altogether - ‘There’s 5 there and 1 more here. How many is that altogether?’. Many children will still need to count them all to find out! • Practise ‘seeing’ numbers by playing with dice or dominoes and calling out the numbers. • Look for groups of things around the home (like eggs in a box, oranges in a bowl, fingers on a hand) and count them.  • Play number ‘I spy’. Choose a group of objects and say how many things there are without saying what they are. Ask your child to guess which things you have chosen. Swap roles. • Play with a small group of objects. Ask your child to count them then split the objects into two smaller groups and ask your child how many there are altogether now. Don’t be surprised if your child has to count them again as recognising that a quantity remains the same when the items are repositioned takes considerable experience. Then try splitting the objects into two different groups (still without changing the overall number of objects) and ask again. • When out and about, look for groups of objects and count them. Can your child tell how many some of them are without counting them (i.e. do they just recognise and ‘know’ the pattern)? Try to set the Numberjack free from the Puzzler’s bubble before the time runs out or you run out of lives. The Number Match game provides an exciting context for practising counting and matching numbers to numerals. A card shows a number of objects and the player has to choose the matching numeral. It gives children practice in visualising numbers, both in familiar patterns such as dice spot patterns and in more irregular patterns. At higher levels, the the groups of objects are often split into two or more smaller groups to encourage the recognition of number bonds and the use of addition if the two smaller numbers are used to find the total number. The circles show how many lives the player has left.  Build up Brain Gain to burst the bubble. The Numberjack is trapped in the Puzzler’s bubble. Level 0 The card shows a number of items to count.    Click on the number that matches how many things there are on the card. Every time you match the numbers correctly, the Brain Gain gets closer to the Puzzler’s bubble. Once it reaches the bubble, the Numberjack will be set free. Every time you make a mistake, you lose a life. If you lose all three lives before bursting the bubble, the Puzzler has won. The numbers are spoken as you move over them to help young readers. Click on the speaker button to turn speaking off or on. Click the swirly arrow to start again. Higher Levels The controls stay the same at higher levels, but the time that the card remains showing is reduced and the number of items to count increases. If the card changes before you have clicked on a matching number, you lose a life. The numbers are not spoken. Click on the speaker button to turn speaking on or off.