Welcome to my page of 'elementary math games' - full of games
for teaching elementary math! elementary school students will love them
and. This is why I've put this site online - so teachers and parents
like you will have plenty of ideas for math games to make math fun for
the kids you care for.
When I was a kid I loved to play with math. My mom and dad
encouraged this, providing me with many math games and math toys, which
gave me a deep intuitive sense of important math concepts. Number,
shape, size, arithmetic, logic, and much more. After all, kids learn best by playing, don't they?
Why should your kids miss out? They shouldn't! Your children
(if you are a parent) or pupils (if you are a teacher) should have the
same opportunity that I did to have math ingrained in them through the
fun that playing with these elementary math games can provide! If you
agree with this, then you've found the right page. Read on. The
children in your care will love you for it.
Your kids need not miss out! I believe your children (if you
are a parent) or pupils (if you are a teacher) should have the same
opportunity that I did, so math becomes ingrained in them through fun
and play! If you agree, and you'd like to give them that opportunity,
you've found the right page. What follows below is a list of all the
math games on this site that are suitable for elementary school kids.
By the way, it's on my kindergarten math games page that I list those games that are suitable for younger children.
Oh, and if you find the list below too long, check out these lists of games for specific grade levels...
And, without further ado, the list of games...!
The 1 to 9 game is a game where players have to collect three numbers that add up to 15. It will help teach arithmetic to younger kids. For older kids, it will help them with strategic and logical thinking. The game's page shows how to vary the rules to make it suitable for any elementary school grade.
This set of tiles can be used to help teach kids how to add and subtract numbers of more than one digit. Step by step tips are provided to help you help your kid 'get' the concepts of carrying and borrowing 1's.
Do you have a group of kindy kids struggling to remember addition sums up to 10? Try this
math board game on them. You'll need to do some printing and cutting first, and find a die (dice) and some playing pieces.
Not exactly a game, but certainly a useful tool for teaching kids addition and subtraction facts - either actively through memory exercises, or passively through osmosis! These
addition and subtraction tables and charts are free, and ready for you to print and use.
There's enough
Addition and Subtraction Worksheets here to last a month of Mondays, including one special one, carefully designed to teach the important links between addition and subtraction.
This Addition Trick seemed like magic when my uncle first showed it to me. I was 11 years old, I think. Here I explain the trick so you can amaze the 11-year-olds in your life.
An
Advent Calendar, besides being a great Christmas tradition, helps teach younger kids counting and calendars in a fun, exciting way. Download and print this free advent calendar, make up up with a trimmer and glue, and enjoy the Christmas countdown with your child.
This
Angle Geometry Quiz tests your knowledge of a few facts relating to angles. Race against the clock as you prove your skills! Topics covered include the interior angles of triangles and quadrilaterals, angles near parallel lines, lines meeting at a point and others.
This is one of two math tricks on this site that let you guess someone's birthday after a sequence of mathematical operations.
The Arithmetic Math Game is a game where players roll special dice and do arithmetic based on the results, hoping to reach a specific number goal. It is most suitable for grades four or five, but you can modify the rules to make it easier or harder.
See
how many numbers you can make with just basic arithmetic operations and the four given digits! A great puzzle for stretching the mathematical creativity of young children, and reinforcing their arithmetic skills.
Mathteroids is an
Asteroid Shooting Game that will help kids with their times tables. As your rocket zips through space, you must be careful to only shoot multiples of the given number - or face dire consequences!
To win this
big numbers contest, your kids just need to think of the biggest number they possibly can - bigger than anyone else's! This contest closed on October 20, 2008, but the page shows you how you can organize a min-contest within a class or a school.
The Upside-Down Calculator Word Game is recommended for kids in fifth grade and fourth grade, and maybe also third grade. Younger children may find it too challenging - although my son's grade one teacher recently gave an exercise like this one to her class! The aim is to find numbers that make words when keyed into an upside-down calculator. See the game's page for more details.
If your kid need fractions practice, teach them the
Fractions Card Game, and watch them drill each other in addition and subtraction of fractions. Or play it with them yourself!
In
This Challenging Math Puzzle you have to place the numbers one through eight in a grid, such that no two neighboring squares have consecutive numbers. It's possible to solve, but it can be quite tough. I've seen 4th graders baffle away for weeks at this puzzle, but its 5th grade and 6th grade kids who seem to have a more realistic chance to solve it. Enjoy!
In a
Cryptarithm puzzle, each digit of an arithmetic sum has been replaced with a letter of the alphabet. The aim of the puzzle is to restore the original sum. These puzzles are sometimes called
alphametics or
crypt-arithmetics. You can get many more such puzzles from the resources available at
www.cryptarithmania.com.
The
Dot Joining Game is a simple paper-and-pencil game, with many hidden mathematical formulae to discover. You can play this game with your kids, and lead them (I show you how on the page) how to help them unlock its hidden mathematical patterns.
The
Easter Date Worksheets allow a child to compute the date of Easter Sunday in any year at all, with no math more complex than long division. Alternatively, try younger kids on the simpler versions of the worksheets - fewer calculations, smaller numbers, but they only work in certain centuries.
This
free "fours" contestclosed on the 20th of October, 2009. The idea was to make as many numbers as possible using the digit '4' (as many times as you like) and the operations plus, minus, divide and times. Soon I'll upload the contest results, and ideas for how you can run a contest like this one in your own classroom.
The six different
Fractions Quizzes on this site are like an online version of
Flashcard Stepping Stones. Choose your fractions topic, then choose which of 3 characters (a pegasus, a clownfish or a rocket) you will help! Then, answer a series of fractions questions until you reach the goal. The further they progress, the more challenging the questions become!
Try
Fish Plus One for kids who need to practice their basic addition skills. This game can be played with a normal pack of cards, once the picture cards have been removed. Once your kids get good at Fish Plus One, move them on to Fish Plus Two, Fish Plus Three, and finally Fish Plus Plus!
Fizz Buzz is a well-known game. It gives practice identifying multiples of 5 and 7. It's a great math game for kids, and a hilarious ice-breaker for adults too! At the web page you'll find a "fizz-buzziness calculator" that will determine what a player should say for any given number.
Flashcard Stepping Stones is a simple game, quick to set up, and helps make flashcards more enjoyable. Be as theatrical as possible, and create an imaginary playful world for your child, as he or she recalls the math facts they need to rescue the princess, or destroy the evil robot, or arrive at adventureland!
Foldable number sheets are a tool for helping younger kids "get" three- or four-digit numbers. Write the number in the blank squares, and unfold it to see its meaning. Or write out the meaning, and fold it up to see the number.
Print out and make this set of
Fractions Dominoes. It's a fractions activity designed to help kids recognise how much of a circle each fraction represents. Unlike some other math games, winning is not just about being better at math - but the game nonetheless provides great learning opportunities.
This
Fraction Simplifying Puzzle challenges kids to simplify a collection of fractions and observe which ones can and can not be simplified. There are variants of the puzzle that make it suitable for kids just learning fractions, all the way up to lower high school.
MathGolf is played on the computer, and the high scores for each month are recorded
on the website. However, as the
tips for parents and
teachers explains, your children will do better if they spend time away from the computer with a pencil and paper, before coming back to the computer to enter their play.
"Get into Groups Of... five minus two!" This game is a great game for younger children - because it involves lots of running around! Good for kindy kids, also for 1st and 2nd graders. The page shows how to vary the rules to make it interesting for older children too.
In this puzzle, the goal is to cut a
Heart-Shaped Biscuit into three pieces, so that each piece contains only one color of
sprinkles. The cuts will be very twisty and wiggly, but that's fine for this puzzle. Because of the shape of the biscuit, this puzzle is perfect for around Valentine's Day, but it can also be used at any other time of the year.
Print these
Magic Number Cards, learn how to use them, and with a bit of practice you'll be able to amaze your friends with your number guessing skills! This page provides the traditional version of this trick, as well as a few variations of my own invention. Full instructions and a video example are available at the web page.
Try the
Magic Square Puzzle Worksheets on this site. Almost 40 magic square puzzles to try, as well as ideas for how to use it in a classroom. Good for grade 3 and up.
Mastermind is a classic game of logical deduction. The first player selects a secret code. The second player tries to guess that code. After each guess, the first player gives clues about how well the second player did - how many digits (or pegs or marbles) in the code are correct, and how many are the right color but the wrong place. In this online version of mastermind, you can pit your wits against the task of finding the computer's secret code, or select your own secret code, and challenge the computer to guess it.
In the
Math Architect Online Game the goal is to design an apartment with the given area. The catch? Each room is a square, and you must have as few rooms as possible! This makes the game challenging enough to keep kids occupied, and deep enough to keep them learning as they play. There is also a high scores table showing the best players each month, year and for all time.
This
Math Board Game will ensure that your children get a lot of arithmetic practice, as they move their pieces from the center of the board to the goals at the corners.
This
Math Card Game will make your kids actually
like practicing their sums!
And don't miss my
Bubble Breaker Game, Math Frozen Bubble, which needs quick-thinking arithmetic to win!
Or play a game of
Math Hangman? "Three strikes and you're out" is the rule as kids try to guess the hidden math word or sum! Good for almost any grade level!
These
Times Table Mazes are good for puzzle-loving children who are learning their 7 and 8 times tables.
Math Lines is like 'Zuma' with a math twist. A twisty row of colorful numbered marbles winds its way across the screen. If they get too far, that's the end of the game. Blast away with marbles of your own, and if you join two marbles that add to 10, they'll explode and give you more time to win. Can you make it to the next level?
In
Math Pathways you do a sequence of arithmetic sums, over and over on different numbers, and this shows you the way across a grid of numbered balls. In the hardest level, you aren't even told what sums you need to do, but have to figure this out from the numbers in the grid!
Playing
Mathino is a card game you canm play with an ordinary pack of cards, which will make your children keen to practice their mental arithmetic!
This
money counting memory game allows kids from the United States, UK, Australia, the EU and Singapore to practice counting money in a familiar game
Try your 2nd graders to 7th graders on the
Pizza Cutting Puzzle! This puzzle can be made as easy or as hard as you like, so you can tune it for any age group.
This
Power Puzzle is an exercise to get kids exploring numbers with their calculator, and observe patterns in the numbers they explore.
By working though the
Rice and Chessboard Worksheets, kids can get a feel for how fast numbers grow when they are repeatedly doubled. The worksheets are based on a modern version of an old story, where a man was awarded a quantity of grains of rice for each square on a chessboard, with each square having twice as many grains as the one before.
These
Sight Number exercises, inspired by "Salisbury Sight Words", are designed to help your kids memorise their addition, subtraction and multiplication tables in the optimal way.
Get your kids to try out these
Sliding Blocks Puzzles just for the challenge of solving them, or get them thinking about the deeper questions of what makes a sliding block puzzle solvable.
This
Spirograph Applet is sure to be a hit with the artistically inclined. You can use it to make pretty patterns, and if you choose to "trust" the applet, you can even save them to disk or print them out. I've also made a page
explaining the math that kids will pick up while using it.
Squink is a Brain Puzzle where players have to find the squares in a pattern on a grid, and count how many squares surround each location. There are two ways to play - you can count the squares in the pattern shown, or you can find a pattern to produce the counts shown. You can also design patterns of squares and share them with your friends!
Times Tables Memory is a memory game that will help transfer times table facts from short-term to long-term memory. It can be played solo, or with a friend.
If your kids like more action, and they are at the same level with their times tables, try
Times Tables Snap!
Looking for a
Times Table Board Game? Print out the playing board and the question cards, and start rolling the dice! Good for small or medium groups of kids, from grades 2 to 4.
These
timetable worksheets will give your child practice reading timetables, schedules, itineraries and the like.
Why not try the
Traffic Jam Game (or the
Online Version)? It's a collection of logic puzzles, ranging from simple to challenging. The brightly-colored playing pieces and simple rules will capture your kid's hearts.
Well, that's all for now. But visit back often, so that you'll always be the first to see any new elementary math games that I put on this site!
Yours, Dr Mike....
Games