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, being
a two player game, is just perfect for the home environment. The game's
page shows how to vary the rules to make it suitable for any age group.
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.
Wishing that there were educational arcade games? Well,
Mathteroids, the math asteroid game is the next best thing! This is an action-packed asteroid shooter game where you must sharpen your math skills to know which asteroids to shoot! Good for grades four and up.
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.
In the
Upside-Down Calculator Word Game, kid will learn how to make their calculator talk! Then they can have hours of fun as they prepare messages for their friends encoded as arithmetic sums.
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!
The Challenging Math Puzzle 8 Game is a great puzzle that will baffle your 10 to 12 year olds, and even your adult friends, for hours! Print as many gamesheets as you like, read the instructions, and then? "If at first you don't succeed..." heh heh!
In this
Chess Jigsaw Puzzle, a chess (or checker) board has been broken into eight pieces. See if your children can join the pieces back together!
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.
You can use the
Dot Joining Game just as a fun game for the kids while camping, or as a classroom exercise to help children realise that math often forms hidden patterns behind ordinary things.
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!
Fish Plus One is a game with simple rules, for teaching addition facts such as 3+1=4. It can be played with a normal set of playing cards, or UNO cards. Once kids have mastered adding 1 to numbers, you can move them on to Fish Plus Two, Fish Plus Three... or maybe even
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!
Print out as many
foldable number sheets as you want, and use them to explain our "number system" - why the 8's in eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty-eight all mean different things, even though they look exactly the same! There are three sizes of printable sheets, and also a movie showing one time I used them with my son to explain a point that was troubling him.
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 a simple game to play, and a very hard game to master. The high scores for each month are recorded on the website. The
tips for parents and teachers explains how to help your kids get the most out of the game.
"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.
This
Addition Worksheet Generator lets you generate as many worksheets as you want for addition. The questions can be as simple as 2+3, or as complex as 35495+37204+114532+38962 and beyond. You use a form to say how many problems you want on teh worksheet, and how difficult you want it to be. You can give the permalink to the worksheet to your students so they can do the questions, and keep the solutions permalink secret. Try it now!
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.
Magic Square Puzzle Worksheets are good ways to promote an interest in math while giving kids practice with their arithmetic.","Looking for
Magic Square Puzzle Worksheets? Look no further! The page contains about 30 worksheets with about 40 magic square puzzles. Also, there is a link to a page explaining how the puzzle worksheets were made.
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, and some ideas for
playing math architect as a paper and pencil game.
There's a
Math Board Game that will teach kids arithmetic skills as they aim for a goal.
This
Math Card Game will make your kids actually
like practicing their sums!
Math Frozen Bubble is an online interactive bubble buster game that also helps kids practice their arithmetic. Good for grade 4 and up.
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
Math Mazes should be good for kids who love mazes, and need a bit of encouragement with their 7 or 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
Does someone need
Practice Multiplying Or Dividing By Ten, Hundred or a Thousand? This worksheet generator lets you create as many practice questions as you like for manipulating powers of 10. Create easy or difficult worksheets, long or short ones, or even create individual worksheets for each member of your classroom to prevent copying...
In the
Pizza Cutting Puzzle kids try to cut up a square pizza to make it fit in a round tray. Try to cut as few pieces as possible!
Want to
play sudoku online? You can at this page. The page also has links to some printable sudoku for kids, and a sudoku solver. If you're a sudoku fan, make sure you visit this page and try out the puzzles it provides. Puzzles can be symmetric, and there are five difficulty levels.
Try this
Powers puzzle, an exercise where kids explore numbers with their calculator, and try to spot patterns in the numbers they explore.
If you want
sudokus to print, you can get as many as you need (I really mean that!) from my
printable sudoku page. Sure, there's a few sudoku worksheets to download, with about 240 puzzles, but the page also has a printable sudoku generator that will let you print up to 1500 sudokus at a time - as many times as you like! Bookmark the page, and you'll never run out of sudoku puzzles again...
There is a famous story about the inventor of chess, who was offered a reward by the emperor of India. He chose a reward that seemed to the emperor very cheap - just a few sacks of rice - but in reality came to more rice than India could produce in a million years. This site has worksheets to help kids work through a
Modern Rice-And-Chessboard Story and see for themselves how rich the reward was.
The
Sight Numbers exercise is designed to help kids memorise their addition, subtraction and multiplication facts in an efficient way. This exercise, even if introduced through a school classroom, would depend mostly on parental involvement - about 5 minutes a day with your child - so it's particularly ideal for the homeschooler!
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.
Do you use
Speed Math Worksheets to help kids improve their mental arithmetic? Then you'll want to download this spreadsheet, because it can generate new worksheets every day. The worksheets can be either times tables or addition/subtraction worksheets, and you can choose the difficulty level. The spreadsheet is available in either Microsoft Office or OpenOffice formats, and there's a video on the web page showing how to use 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!
Get
Interval Of Time Worksheets here - as many as you need, all different if you like. This worksheet generator allows you to create randomized worksheets, but still bookmark a particular worksheet (and its solutions) so that you can come back to it later. The worksheets cover adding or subtracting an amount of time to a particular time of day, or finding the time interval between two times of day.
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.
The Traffic Jam Game is one of my favorite amongst the elementary math games on this site. It's a great puzzle for teaching logical thinking and boosting problem-solving ability. Yet, the rules are simple enough that a four-year old can understand them. First, second and third grade kids will enjoy the simpler puzzles. Fourth, fifth and sixth graders will enjoy the challenge of the harder ones. Try the
printable version or the
online version.
There are many
Virtual Worlds For Kids where kids can meet their friends, play games, collect trinkets and pets, and generally socialize in a safe virtual environment. This page contains a link to one entitle "Secret Builders"
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