In this activity, students guess the number you are thinking of given clues. This is a fun way to build number sense, logical reasoning, and mathematical vocabulary. If students can’t remember some of the vocabulary or concepts, it is a great opportunity to have some conversations about them. It can be useful to let kids use a hundred chart to keep track of which number it is not. Ask your student why they are crossing out certain numbers and not others. This activity comes from books by Terry Kawas.
Here is a hundreds chart: https://www.ccboe.com/schools/jenifer/images/pdfs/100Chart.pdf
Example 1
- The number is greater than the number of pennies in a quarter
- The number is less than the number of pennies in five dimes
- The number is an odd number
- If you count by 5’s you say the number.
- The sum of the digits is 8.
- What is my number?
Example 2
- It’s more than 43.
- It’s less than 50.
- It’s an even number.
- Both digits are the same.
- What is my number?
Example 3
- The number is greater than 6 x 4.
- The number is less than 8 x 7.
- The number is even.
- The number is a multiple of 3.
- The difference of the digits is four.
- What is my number?
For older grades, students can make their own number hunt.
You can adapt this for younger grades by using different vocabulary appropriate for their grade level or using the numbers 0-10. For example, for kindergarten, you could have them draw the numbers from 0-10 on a number line. They can guess a number and you can tell them it is bigger or smaller than that number. With each guess, they can narrow down which numbers it could be.
You can find more of these problems in Terry Kawas’ books here: http://mathwire.com/problemsolving/guessthenumber.pdf and http://mathwire.com/hblogic/hblogic2.pdf