What the Robin Hood Doubles Maths Game Actually Is
The Robin Hood Doubles Maths Game is a classroom resource designed to help primary school children practice their doubles facts — doubling numbers from 1 up to at least 12, sometimes higher. It uses a themed board or card system where students solve doubling problems to progress. The premise is straightforward enough: you roll a die, move a counter, and answer a doubles question to stay on the board. If you get it wrong, you go back. It's not groundbreaking design, but it works because repetition with a mild competitive element sticks better than worksheets for most seven- to nine-year-olds. I ran this game with a Year 3 class last term as part of a weekly maths rotation. What surprised me wasn't that the game worked, but how many kids who struggled with written doubling exercises suddenly performed accurately when the same facts were embedded in play. There's something about the low-stakes framing that reduces anxiety. That said, it's not a magic bullet for every child, and I'll get to the edge cases in a moment.
How to Run the Robin Hood Doubles Maths Game in a Real Classroom
Print the game board and the question cards. Cut them out. You need dice, counters, and a quiet space where two or three kids can play without disturbing the rest of the room. Set up the game at one station during your maths rotation. Children pair up — one player is Robin, the other is a member of the Sheriff's men. They take turns rolling and answering. Here's the mechanics, plain and simple. Each player starts at the beginning of the board. On your turn, roll the die and move that many spaces. Land on a space with a number, then state the doubles fact for that number — if you land on 6, you say "6 plus 6 equals 12." Correct answer means you stay. Wrong answer sends you back two spaces. The first player to reach the finish line wins. Some versions have double spaces where you move forward extra, or trap spaces where you skip a turn. Check which edition you have. One thing I found useful: pre-teach the doubles before letting them play. Twenty minutes of explicit instruction on 1 through 10 doubles, then let the game serve as practice. Don't expect them to learn the facts through play alone. The game reinforces; it doesn't introduce.
Where It Breaks Down
There's a specific problem I hit that I didn't anticipate. Several children in my class had memorised the sequence of doubles answers — "two, four, six, eight, ten" — but couldn't actually compute doubles of unfamiliar numbers. So when they rolled a 7 or a 9, they'd just recite the sequence from memory and often land on the wrong answer. The game rewarded recall, not understanding. My workaround was simple. Before each turn, the child had to explain their answer out loud — not just say it. If they said "7 plus 7 is 14," I'd ask, "How do you know?" Most could fall back on "I know 5 plus 5 is 10, so add 2 more." A few couldn't explain at all. For those kids, I paused the game and did five minutes of concrete modelling with counters or dice before they returned. It added maybe ten minutes to the session, but it exposed the gap that the game otherwise hid. Another limitation worth noting: the game only covers addition doubles. It doesn't extend to halves, which is the natural inverse and equally important at this stage. Kids who master doubles through this game often stumble the first time they see "half of 10" because the cognitive flip isn't automatic. You'll need a separate activity for that. I use a simple sharing game with physical objects — buttons, cubes, whatever you have — and frame it as the reverse version of the same concept.
Get the Full Details
The resource also tends to cap out at doubles of 10 or 12. If you have children working toward doubles of 15 or 20, you'll need to create your own extension cards or combine this with another resource. The base game doesn't go there by default.
Robin Hood Doubles Maths Game — Where to Get It
The resource is available through a handful of UK-based educational sites. Twinkl hosts a version, as do TES Resources and Primary Resources. The Twinkl version is the most complete package — it includes the board, question cards, and instructions. Expect to either download it for free with an account or spend a few pounds if you want the full colour-printed set. The free versions are perfectly adequate. If you're searching for it, use the full phrase "Robin Hood Doubles Maths Game" because variations like just "doubles game" will return dozens of unrelated results. The themed version is distinct enough that the exact naming helps narrow things down. One practical note: the printable quality matters more than you'd think. If you print the board on standard A4 paper, it's flimsy and tears quickly with repeated use. Print it on A3 or cardstock if your printer supports it. I laminated mine after printing on normal paper — it's not ideal, but it's cheap and it lasts. A proper laminate takes about five minutes per board and makes it survive a full term of classroom use.
When This Isn't the Right Tool
Don't use this game with children who haven't yet grasped the concept of doubling. I've seen teachers deploy it as an introduction, and the result is usually frustrated kids staring at boards they can't engage with because the underlying number sense isn't there. If a child can't tell you what double 4 is when you ask directly, this game will expose that gap in front of peers, which is demoralising. Do the explicit teaching first. Then use the game as practice. It's also not suitable for children with significant number sense difficulties without modification. The speed of play and the public nature of answering can overwhelm some learners. In those cases, one-on-one play with a parent or teaching assistant, using fewer cards and a slower pace, works better. The game structure is the same; you just strip away the social pressure. At the end of the day, the Robin Hood Doubles Maths Game is a solid reinforcement tool for children who already have some grounding in doubles. It's not a comprehensive maths solution, and it has clear boundaries around what it covers and who it serves. But for its narrow purpose — building fluency in doubles facts through repeated, low-pressure practice — it does the job adequately and without excessive cost or prep time.
