What are your favourite maths games?

Inspired by the discussion of whether it is talent or time devoted to maths that creates mathematical excellence (I am firmly in the interest-plus-time-devoted camp) I want get some maths games and I am looking for some recommendations :slight_smile:

  • My current favourite is Fraction War - I have been playing this with my niece and her two friends, with great success. Granted, they are older (age 7-12) but I’m sure there are many EL kids who enjoy this too.

Go Fish is another good one.

I tried BrainBox Maths but I did not love it as it seemd to focus more on memory than maths. Do any of you use this? Maybe I should give it another go?

For simply playing around, we love pattern blocks, tangrams, weighing scales, linking cubes, geoboards, puzzles

Do you have any favourite maths games, either homemade or commercial? And do you have any that you regret buying?

A good game that I play when I’m tutoring maths is Frango - it is bingo with equivalent fractions and you have to work out which pieces fit your board. Not really good for toddlers, though!

We have a foam floor mat with numerals 1-20 which has endless potential - my 3yo loves jumping up and down the numbers in order, or running to the number I call out.

He also absolutely loves our transport counters, which he drives (flies/sails) into patterns.

A board game that we have almost grown out of is Colorama - great for learning colours and shapes, and fine motor. We still have fun playing but it is no longer a challenge!

Thanks seastar for starting this thread. I was about to ask the same - a single place for all the possible math games with young children. I am using Right start games which are wonderful.

Frango sounds great MummyRoo - do you use any other games while tutoring? What age group do you tutor? My two 17 year old nephews are having a lot of trouble with maths so I’m looking for ideas for my sister.

Arvi - do you have the right start games book? If so, is it worth it? I’ve just been using the video clips on YouTube as a guide.

I tutor primary school age. The two other games I tend to use are Smath and Totally Tut - both number facts games (+ - * and /).

Totally Tut is about finding 2-,3-, and 4- number sums that equal the same number and can be quite a challenge (if you don’t have a cheating 10 year old to deal with lol) since you have to choose number tiles like in scrabble so have no control over what sums you might do. You can choose whether to use just addition and subtraction, or add in multiplication and division.

Smath is like scrabble with equations. Great, challenging game - similar to Totally Tut, but introduces balancing two sides of an equation and using brackets. In theory the equations should be limited to answers 12 or below, but I tweak the rules to allow any number you can make with your tiles to give more variety in the sums.

I have just introduced the 60 second sweep game which is linked in the math brag thread.

YEAH!!!
Math games are a staple in our house, and we have amassed quite a collection of fantastic games of all formats. We play every day, and it is awesome because it is Daddy’s go-to area if the two of them are playing…he often wants to contribute to her EL experience, and this is a really great way to do it.
We also reserve 15-30 minutes 3/4 times per week after dinner/bath to play a quick game as a family.

Then, as I mentioned in the toddler math threads, we have Friday Family Night :yes: lots and lots of games!

Okay, I am going to try to organize some of our favorites and past favorites in some sort of order, by level of difficulty/skill.
Since there are so many, I am going to probably have to post and edit as I am on the IPad and don’t want to chance it being lost prior to posting! :wink: don’t you HATE that?!

Also, here is a fabulous site where I find many of our games. You can search by topic as well if you are trying to find a game to enrich a specific theme:
http://www.educationallearninggames.com/

I also love games from www.Foxmind.com and www.Thinkfun.com

1)I think the RS math games are a must! We do have the Mathgames book and the Activities for AL Abacus and they are both incredibly helpful…I actually credit much of our RS success to these books. We continue with the whole program to ensure no gaps, but EL kids WILL need supplementation with RS. However, the teaching fits exceptionally well into EL.

  1. Chutes and Ladders: very basic, can start at pretty much any age. Practice both counting on and addition/subtraction based upon how you decide to word it. We started with counting on, then later played with an abacus to reinforce.
    Oh! When Alex was teeny and didn’t have the attention span to sit that long I made a home made version of Chutes and Ladders that only went up to 20. Highly recommend this for kids 12 months+

  2. Hi-Ho Cherry-O: awesome game for learning math facts up to ten in addition/subtraction…a Bonus is that it only takes 5-10 minutes to play!

  3. Go Fish! : so many math concepts here. Be sure to have your kiddo determine the winner by counting up Each player’s number of pairs and comparing to see who has most/fewest, etc…

  4. Sum Swamp: this is an all time favorite. Can’t say enough about it! Addition/subtraction, even/odd, and more. Tip: we discovered it is quite easy to adapt to other arithmetic if you buy separate operation dice. Or simply make it a bit more difficult by using polyhedral dice :biggrin:

  5. card game 7-ate-9: really fun, quick card game to practice adding +- 1, 2, and 3 to sums.

  6. Think Fun Math Dice: use all operations or limit to add/subtract.

  7. War card games and all variations

  8. S’Math: we honestly LOVE this game but it would be far superior if the tiles were not so fiddly!

  9. Muggins Math: this is a fantastic game we just got after xmas that also uses all arithmetic. I can tell it is going to be an endless favorite!

  10. Dino Math Tracks: this is a place value game that can be easily adapted to LO. We use this with the RS place value cards, but you could make your own.

  11. Step Right Up Estimation: this one we just got, and have only played once…but Alex will now try to estimate all sorts of things, and it is lovely for discussion of concepts and comparisons.

  12. Iguana Factor Multiplication: this is a lot of fun and concentrates on multiplication facts. It also has a bit of strategy. The one thing I would criticize about this game is that the spinner is not well-designed and seriously slows the game down…after a couple of tries we abandoned the spinner and simply used 10-sided dice. This works amazingly well and moves the game right along at a better rate :slight_smile:

14)Presto-Chango Money, Rolling in the Money, and Money Bags: all fun money games, but Money Bags Coin Value Math is our favorite

We also have gotten quite into logic games:
Here are our two current faves…
Rush Hour, Jr.
Zoologic

We also make up a lot of games…we play math Bingo a lot and have a version for all arithmetic operations, time, money, fractions, and even temperature!
UNO cards are fantastic and can be used to make up any number of games.

Five of our more active math games are:
A 20-ft number line
A Trampoline
Number Bean bags (practice just about any math skill with these! I made four home-made operation beanbags to challenge her.)
RS-inspired Skittles: I posted a picture of these in the toddler math thread, but we play a lot of games with these as well.

And her favorite game when she was memorizing addition facts:
http://www.learningresources.com/product/math+mat+challenge-trade-+game.do

SO glad others are enjoying the sixty-second sweep as well!

Hope it helps as my fingers are tired of this IPad!!! lol

Thank you all so much for the recommendations. I just bought WAY too many of them on Amazon! I’ll let you know how we get on with them.

Does anyone have a link to the 60 second sweep game please? thanks

Seastar I just googled it & under the images there was a pdf file which i was able to print off.

1 thing I would like to add which might be helpful for others with younger ones… I can’t get a lot of the games etc where I am so I have been using an ebook from Scholastic teacher’s resources, 15 math songs - it’s great. My 2yr 2 mth old, has cottoned on to quite a few concepts… or I should say is in the process of cottoning on - telling the time, addition, fractions (anything that involves pizza is very quickly tucked away in that sweet ittle head). If you ask him what 2 +2 is, he looks at you like you have 2 heads but if you sing it to him… well that’s easy, it’s 4 :slight_smile: