Games for 6 Year Olds: Reading Sentences, Adding Past Ten

Six-year-olds cross two lines in the same year. In reading, they stop decoding word by word and start reading a sentence — which means they finally get meaning, not just noise. In maths, they leave the safety of ten: 8+5 cannot be done on the fingers of one hand, so they need a strategy.

The strategy that matters most this year is "make ten". To add 8+5, take 2 from the 5 to fill the 8 up to 10, then add the 3 that is left: 13. Children who are taught this stop counting on their fingers within a few weeks. Children who are not, keep counting until Year 4. Several games here drill it directly, with the ten-frame shown on screen while the child answers.

Beyond arithmetic. Six is a good age for direction and space: north/south/east/west, left and right from the character's point of view rather than your own, and reading a simple map. It is also the earliest age where real science content lands — the layers under our feet, the planets in order, a food chain — provided the child never has to read a paragraph to get it.

Tip for the grown-up. Ask "how did you know?" after a correct answer, not after a wrong one. Wrong answers make children defensive; right answers make them explain their method, and explaining the method is what fixes it in place.

Related pages: games for 7 year olds, the curriculum view on games for 1st graders, number work under addition games for kids, and reading practice under reading games for kids.