“Ewe” and your students will love using math with buttons on muttons in these 3 simple versions of the game:

Materials for 1 or more players:

A container of mixed buttons having 1 hole, 2 holes, or 4 holes

A copy for each player of a game board (see description in Game rules below)…

Put all the buttons in a pile for all players to use. Decide which variety of “Mutton Button Game” to play (see below for Game 1, 2, or 3)

The winner is the person who gets as close to each number on a woolly sheep using the least number of buttons!

Game One:

• Board — an outline of a woolly sheep, numbers 15, 27, 5, and 100 written randomly inside.

• Players select button holes that add or subtract together to make each of the total numbers on the game board using the fewest buttons

Game Two:

• Board — an outline of a woolly sheep, numbers 15, 63, 199, and 19 written randomly inside.

• Players select button holes that add, subtract, multiply, or divide together to make each of the total numbers on the game board using the fewest buttons

Game Three:

• Board — same as Game Two.

• Players select button holes using each kind of calculation only once (add, subtract, multiply, divide) to make each of the total numbers using the fewest buttons.

Material for 1 or more players:

—a 7 by 7 grid of 49 buttons in 7 rows and 7 columns

To Play:

• In turn, each player takes away 2 or 3, or 4 buttons which lay next to each other in a straight line either vertically or horizontally, but not diagonally.

• The player who removes the last button is the winner!

• A Variation —- keep track of the color and number of holes on the bottons. Then use this rule: take away 2, 3, or 4 buttons on a turn where buttons either have the same number of holes, or are of the same color!

Materials for 1 or more players:

• Draw a game board on a piece of paper , then vertically place a 0 on the top edge, and then a third of the way down from that draw 6 horizontal lines about 1 inch apart, and then space down to the bottom edge of the paper and write word “start”.

• write the number “5” on the first horizontal line from the bottom the

• Above that write the number 10, then above that write the number 15, then 20, and finally write 25.

How to play: Notice the starting line and the numbers on the board….

• On the first turn, a player places a button at the start line. With one flick of the finger, they toss the button from that point aiming for the highest number on the board (another number between the lines)….

• Other players take turns.

• A player may knock another player’s button off the board “field” by hitting it on any turn…

• If a button lands onthe line between 2 “fields”, it scores according to the highest field…. beyond the number 25, nothing is scored.

• After all the buttons have been played, add up all the points for the remaining buttons on the board…

• The winner is the player with the highest total points!