Parenting 

Advertisement

Marble probability

This team game can be played with simple household items. The players use the knowledge of how many marbles of each colour they have to try and correctly predict what colours they will draw from the can. Try keeping track of each team's correct prediction over the course of several games to determine which team has the best overall prediction record.

What this activity will develop:
Maths, thinking and social skills

What you'll need:

• Bowl
• Two colours of marbles (12 each)
• Two cocoa tins
• Pencils
• Paper

What to do:

1. The players divide into two teams. Each team picks six marbles, in any combination of the two colours, to put in its tin.

2. Each team tells the other the number of each colour in its tin. For example, 'Our team has four blue marbles and two red ones'.

3. The members of one team predict the number of marbles of each colour that they will draw, two at a time, from the other team's tin. One member of the team writes the prediction on a sheet of paper. For example, 'We will draw 1 blue and 1 red'.

4. A member from each team draws two marbles from the other team's tin without looking.

5. The marbles drawn are compared to the team's prediction. If the prediction was correct, the team keeps the marbles and sets them aside. If the prediction is incorrect, the team returns the marbles to the other team's tin. The first team to collect all the marbles wins.

 

Select more skills:
• Listening Skills
• Math Skills
• Motor Skills Help
• Science Fun
• Reading Skills
• Vocabulary Builder

Back to Skill Builder main page

Delicious     Digg     reddit     Facebook     StumbleUpon

  Get the latest iVillage news on your desktop    Sign up for more iVillage RSS feeds

© iVillage Limited 2000-2008. All rights reserved. | © iVillage inc. 1995-2008. All rights reserved.
iVillage Ltd is a UK company registered in England & Wales (3837269) at 80-110 New Oxford Street, London WC1 1HB