Prime Climb

Product Information

With this Prime Climb problem, my first instinct was to draw a hundred chart to organize which numbers were one step away from winning and which numbers were more than one step away from winning. Drawing a grid and writing out the numbers 1-100 was time consuming. And, it seemed like my group was rushing ahead of me. But, I persevered at creating my visual representation. Once I started marking the numbers on my chart, my groupmates were all using my hundred chart to help come up with the next solutions. In the end, everyone was copying from my chart to their notes.

The game itself is fun and fast paced, with various competitive and strategic elements that ensure that kids will want to play it again and again. As they play, players can choose to deliberately aim for a prime number, where they can gamble on a favorable outcome, or choose to avoid them altogether. During your Move Phase, you add, subtract, multiply, or divide the number your pawn is on by a number you rolled and send that pawn to the resulting number. You must use all of your rolled numbers, one at a time. If you have Keeper cards, you may choose to play one or more of them before, between, or after applying your dice rolls. Your pawns may land on any space on the board, including occupied spaces. Pawns may never move to a space not on the board, such as negative numbers, non-whole numbers, or numbers greater than 101.

How to Play

After you play a card, discard it. If you run out of cards, shuffle the discard pile and continue drawing as necessary. 101 and Winning the Game In the middle of a certain game, Katherine and I were down to a single pawn each. Hers was on 24, and mine was on a certain unnamed number. I rolled a little too forcefully, and the dice went off the table on her side.
“Ha,” she said. “If you had been at 0, you could have hit me.”
“Then I can hit you from where I am!” I said.
What number was I on? The game feels somewhat similar to games such as Trouble, Sorry or Headache, but has an interesting and very useful educational twist to it that we really appreciate. STEP SIX: Player One needs to decide what to do with each die. Each die needs to be applied to a pawn. Each die is applied by either adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing it with the number that pawn is on. Because it’s on 0, the only option is to add it. So, Player One adds the 7 die to one pawn and MOVES it to 7. Then Player One adds the 10 die to the other pawn and MOVES it to 10.

Although Prime Climb is for older kids, there's no reason why a 1st grader can't color in the sheet. Just tell them to skip-count by 2s and color a section with the 2 color. Do the same for the 3s, 5s, and 7s, and you'll have colored in a lot. Then you and your kids can discuss how to color in all the pieces that are still unfilled. You CANNOT add 9 to 26 to make 35, and then multiply 35 by 3, for if you did, you would go to 105, which is off the board. You must stay on the board at all times. (It’s not enough just to end up on the board at the end of your turn.) STEP THIRTEEN: Because Player One has a pawn on an all-red spot {11}, he gets to DRAW a card. It’s a KEEPER card that he can use on a future turn. So, his turn is now over. ORGANIZATIONAL COMPONENT : ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Prime Climb is designed beautifully with quality pieces, though the pawns could probably take an upgrade. The box is sturdy, but not small. It does have a divider insert which helps keep things neat. The board is the fold-out type and is very well-made and easy to fold/unfold. ORGANIZATIONAL COMPONENT : 5/5 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥People sometimes ask why you would ever subtract or divide. As you play more, you’ll see opportunities where subtraction and division open up great moves. Here is a case where you might want to divide. With a pawn on 64, you roll a 2 and a 3. You could: STEP NINETEEN: Player One ROLLS a 4 and 5. Player One adds the 4 to the 97 spot and MOVES to 101! That pawn is done and can be removed from the board! Player One is halfway to winning! Whether players are racing as fast as they can to 101, bumping each other to the start or sneakily deploying cards, Prime Climb is simply a fun board game to play and its mechanics and gameplay should keep kids and adults interested for quite some time. Good way to practice and visualize math We've been planning to write curriculum up for older grades as well, but haven't done so. Let me know if you'd like to collaborate on some high school level lessons/questions.

Here's where the real fun starts: Dan made a blank sheet with a chart forevery number from 1 to 100. You can print out copies for your kids and get them to choose their own colors for each prime factor! Prime Climb is playful learning as it should be, where the play actually reinforces students’ discovery and understanding of mathematical concepts. It takes a creative mathematics educator like Dan Finkel to achieve that balance. It is obvious from the design of Prime Climb that Dan’s pedagogical aims fuel every aspect of gameplay. You roll double 2s, with a pawn on 78, and an opponent pawn on 42. This means you have four 2s that you must use. You could: Educational benefits aside, at the end of the day Prime Climb is a fun race-style board game that will have players race, scheme and bump their way to a finish line and it should provide hours of entertainment for fans of the genre. Who Is It Not Ideal For? Those who don’t like board games With that said, we feel that the game can be used by kids of just about any age (such as homeschooling students following a more advanced math curricula) so long as they are comfortable with the underlying math skills required and, of course, are able to sit still and learn, remember and adhere to the usual series of sequential and conditional rules that board games tend to involve (if a piece lands on X then do Y).

In our opinion, the algebraic puzzles baked into the game’s core mechanics, combined with its competitive gameplay and card-based strategic element, can make it a solid and rigorous mental workout for players of any age. What’s Included This works for division too. Say you want to divide 84 by 4. When you divide, all you do is remove the colors of the smaller number from the bigger one. In this case, you need to remove the two oranges in 4 from the colors in 84. That means you’re looking for a number with the colors purple and green. Sure enough, 21 has precisely those colors, and 84 divided by 4 is 21. In terms of look and feel they are similar when placed face down, which adds a bit of suspense to each card draw. Multiplication Table Add, subtract, multiply, or divide the value of each die to your current place on the board. For example, if I’m on START and roll a 3 and 7, I can add 3 and add 7 to end on 10, add 3 and multiply by 7 to end on 21, add 7 and multiply by 3 to end on 21, or add 7 and subtract 3 to end on 4. In normal game play, Bump and Draw Phases happen after all your moves are completed. In Double Time, you bump and draw after each move a pawn. You can draw two or more Prime cards per turn in Double Time.

Add 9 to move one pawn from 4 to 13, and multiply by 3 to move the other from 26 to 78. Since 13 is completely red, you would draw a card.The overall goal of each player is to get both of their pieces to the space marked 101 without overshooting it. If you draw a Keeper Card, keep that card, face up, for a future turn. You may play any number of Keeper Cards during your Move Phase. You may not play a Keeper card the turn you draw it. In addition to these decisions, Prime Climb also has its Prime Cards, which can suddenly change up a game by modifying, restricting or amplifying player positions and performance.