Math Games and Activities

We love to play games especially for math. Here are some fun games and activities to help little ones develop more number sense.

Uno is such a fun way to teach colors and numbers. It's great for the little ones and older kids love this game too. At the end of a round the older kids can practice adding up the cards to determine the score.

War is a fun way to learn greater than and less than. This game is so simple. All you do is divide a standard deck of cards between two players. (Remove the face cards and pretend the A's are 1's.) Then the players flip up the top card and the person who flips the higher card gets to take both. The play continues until one person has all the cards and is declaired the winner.

Creating a new calendar teaches kids about numbers, seasons, days, weeks, months, and years. They also get handwriting practice, and when they're done they have their very own calendar. Microsoft Word or other word processing programs can be used to print-out blank calendars. Then the child can count the number of days in a week, label the weeks, label the months and copy the numbers from another calendar of the same year into the appropriate boxes for each month. When we did this activity we did one month per week. Each time we worked on a different month. While working on the month we talked about things that are done in that month; holidays, birthdays, seasons, etc... and then drew an appropriate picture. We have always done this activity at the end of the year so the new calendar is ready in January.

Black Jack 21 is not just a gamboling game. It's a fun way for kids to practice adding. If you've never played, here are the rules. Basically the players try to collect cards so that the total point value of the cards is 21 or closer to 21 than their opponent - without going over. My kids love this game!

In addition to these activities counting things interesting outside and in stories, talking about ages, birthdays, holidays, counting the days until the grandparents visit, cooking, playing with math toys such as pattern puzzles, clocks and geometrical toys are all wonderful math activities for young children.