Printable Math Puzzles - Cartesian Battleships on the Full Cartesian Grid
Number of players: 2 Materials required: A labeled grid as show. This printable math puzzles sheet can be downloaded for free at the bottom of this page (in PDF format). How to Play: This version of Battleships uses all four quadrants of the Cartesian grid. As usual, the players place their ships on the grid. To start with, use one each of 3, 4, 5 and 6-length ships. More can be added for a longer game. The ships must be placed on the intersections of the axis lines, as shown in the above picture. Each player takes it in turns firing shots. To fire a shot, the player calls out the grid location using the ACROSS VALUE (the x value) first, then the UP/DOWN VALUE (the y value). Points need to be called in this (x,y) format. It is important to note that both the x and y values are taken FROM THE CENTRE. The second diagram below shows some examples of point locations.
If the coordinates the firing player has called contains part of a ship, the defending player must call out "HIT!". Otherwise they call "MISS!". If all parts of a ship are hit, the player must call out "SUNK". Play then alternates until one player has lost all parts of all of her ships. What is being learned? By playing this game, your child is learning to find her way around on the Cartesian (x,y) grid using an across then up method. The order of across / up takes some time to learn, and so it is to be expected that your child will initially make many mistakes when calling out the coordinates. It will take at least three games before she is consistently able to call the coordinates in the correct order. How to extend or shorten the game: This game can be extended by adding more ships. It can be shortened by making the playing grid smaller. |
