Super Tens

We want to share with you a free place vale game perfect for first grade and kindergarten math centers.

Super Tens will help your students with a range of number, counting and early arithmetic strategies.

You will need: 

• game boards (print about 10 from the FREE file HERE), 
• matchsticks (the coloured ones are nice), 
• dice (optional) and worksheet/pencils (optional)

This game can be played by an individual student or a small group. Students will work towards making groups of ten (by putting matchsticks on, as hair) and calculating the total by counting in tens and looking at how many tens are made, and how many additional 'ones' are left over.

Level 1 

Give the group a pile of matchsticks and get them to place them on the game boards with 1:1 correspondence and count the total. Make the pile you give them reflective of their ability (perhaps 10-30 sticks). Tell your students that each super hero can have ten sticks of hair at the most. Once ten is made, they need to start a new game board.

Level 2 

Students roll a dice, and place the same number of sticks onto the board as the number rolled. Students keep rolling and adding hair to make up tens. This will help the students that need to work on dot and number recognition and counting.

Level 3 

Students roll two dice, adding the numbers rolled, and then placing the matching number of sticks on their boards.

For levels 2 & 3, decide for your students what limit you would like to place on the group making 'Super Tens' - you might ask them to stop within a certain time frame, or when they get to a certain number. The worksheet that we have included will work with numbers up to 99.




Students record the number of tens and ones they made, and write it as a numeral.

I made all the sheets in this file blackline, to make it easier for you to copy so many pages. Your students may like to colour them in after you play, or you could also print them on brightly coloured paper and laminate them.


Have fun with Super Tens!