Shut the Box is a simple and classic dice game that is simple to learn, fun to play, and develops fluency with addition facts. I recently learned that it was originally a traditional English pub game used for gambling! It is one of my students’ favorites. Students of all ages enjoy it, from kindergarteners just learning to add to older students who can try different strategies in choosing which addition combinations to use.
There are many variations available but they all look basically like this:
Shut the Box Addition Game Rules
Flip up all of the numbers. During the game of Shut the Box, your goal is to flip as many of the numbers down as you can.
The first player rolls both dice. After his roll, he can either flip over one tab that is the sum of the two dice, or he can flip any combination of tabs that equals the sum. He then will roll the dice again and flip the next number or combination. Once he rolls a number where he can no longer flip down tabs that equal or total the number thrown on both dice combined, his turn ends.
Add the numbers on the remaining tabs that have not been flipped down. This is the player’s score for that round. Flip all of the tabs back up and let the next player have a turn.
You can decide a predetermined number of rounds and add the total for the rounds at the end. Lowest score wins! As with any game, I not only have the kids use addition strategies to tally their score, but ask them to find the difference between the players’ scores, a great way to emphasize the concept of subtraction as difference.
Variations
Variations of the classic game include:
- games with more than 9 number tabs (usually 10 but I have seen it up to 12,)
- smaller travel sized games
- a board game style for 4 players where all players have their own set of number tabs.
