The pandas are getting hungry, and it’s up to your students to feed them! Use this exciting small group game to practise multiplication and division fact families and inverse operations.

This game is suitable for 2-6 players. Each player will need a game board placed inside a write-and-wipe sleeve and a paper cup. You will also need some glass or plastic marbles to play. The number of players determines the number of marbles you need; multiply the players by 10 for an easy match (ie. 30 marbles for three players) or by 12 for a more challenging game (ie. 36 marbles for three players).

To play, place the marbles in the centre of the group. On ‘Go’, players place their cups upside-down over as many marbles as possible and slide them until all their marbles are on the semi-circle of their game board. This continues until all the central marbles have been claimed.

Next, players divide their marbles into two groups of any size using the leaves, then fill the white boxes to complete the multiplication and division fact family grid. For example, a player who claimed 11 marbles could split them into 5 and 6, creating the sum 5 x 6 = 30 and the complementary inverse operations. Players earn points for the number of marbles they collect, but only if the group checks their work and confirms that their fact families are correct. Use the points grid to keep track of scoring by crossing off numbers with a marker or using a counter or manipulative.

This download comes with printable student instructions (4 to a page), 13 game board colour options (including full colour, low colour and black & white), an optional printable recording sheet you can use for evidence and assessment (2 to a page) and optional panda head decorations to use on your cups.