On a sheet of paper covered with dots Little Ming and Little Fung are playing a game.
It is almost suppertime and Granma T is busy preparing the meal. Repeated requests to clear the table and set out bowls and chopsticks have gone unheard.

Granma T: For the last time MOVE and SET the TABLE!

Taken by surprise the two children splutter..

LM: We were only doing our homework.

LF: And I was winning.

GT: Perhaps over supper you will explain what has kept you so engrossed; that has got Mai Ling and Chi Ping so animated while the workmen appear to have forgotten they come here to work.

LM: It is game we have been taught at school

LF: To help us learn all about coordinates.

GT: Coordinates you mean a point P (x , y). That takes me back now what did we call them back then?

LF: Call what Granma?

GT: An ordered sequence of two numbers that locate a point on a sheet of paper - the plane.

LM: Plain! What do you mean Granma?

GT: Yes a point on the plane and an ordered sequence of three numbers locates a point in space.

LF: No, no Granma this is just a game we will show you after supper - you might like to play!

GT: And is this the game everyone in the yard has been playing?

LM: I am afraid so but there was not that much to do anyway that could not wait!

GT: So I am paying others to play games? Even Mai Ling was playing wasn't she?

GT: Now let us eat.

..in the meantime

Children you might like to:

• Complete the silhouette of Little Ming studying the board game and trying to win.
• Look at Play Games and play the game with a friend. Why not try to play the game with two friends and three colours?
• Explore the Internet and find out which mathematician 'invented' the idea of coordinates.

Parents you might like to:

• Try playing the games of Coordinate Cunning in Play Games
• Discuss strategies to help you win.
• Talk about what you remember doing with 'Coordinate plane' when last in school.
• Help find out about the mathematician who is reputed to have 'invented' the Cartesian (hint) plane.

Teachers you might like to:

• Organise a knockout competition around the game of Coordinate Cunning in Play Games with children at each stage having to win the best of three games until the final. Then they can play the best of five games!
• Explain the terms plain and plane and go on to show how the coordinate plane can be used to show multiplication facts (y = 2x, y = 3x etc..)
• Introduce children to coordinates in space (x,y,z).