Online Math Games
The best interactive math games I've found so far
There's only one reason for this page, and it's very simple. To my mind,
Sugar Sugar is a cool geometry game. Sugar pours out from a place near the top of the screen, and your goal is to make the sugar fall into the correct cups. You do this by drawing on the screen with the mouse, and watching as sprinkles of sugar trickle down the lines you draw. Challenging and fun!
This is the Online Traffic Jam Game. Traffic Jam Game is the famous game where you have to move the red car out of the traffic jammed parking lot. This free online version has hundreds of puzzles, as well as links to PC, Mac and Android versions you can buy.
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?
Math Frozen Bubble is an online interactive bubble buster game that also helps kids practice their arithmetic. Good for grade 4 and up.
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.
Get your kids using this Spirograph Applet, and watch them make beautiful patterns. While they are enjoying the artwork, you can read here about the math they are learning!
The Simplifying Fractions Quiz is a quiz like the other fractions quizzes on this size - you help your avatar reach their goal by answering fractions questions. In this case, the fractions questions are about fraction simplification.
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.
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.
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!
If you're good at (or need practice at) dividing fractions, try this Dividing Fractions Quiz
This Weekly Puzzle Google Gadget will show you a new math puzzle every week. If you don't want to visit the web page each week, you can put the gadget on your own web page, or on your personalized google start page.
The Equivalent Fractions Quiz is an online quiz for testing whether kids know how to do equivalent fractions. Take a ride on a spaceship, or help a pegasus raid an evil magician's castle!
The Multiplying Fractions Quiz is yet another fractions quiz game, this time for multiplication. See if you can help the spaceship reach the stars of the milky way!
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!
Design and make your own Paper Polyhedra right in your web browser with this java applet. You can design beautiful symmetric shapes with an interactiove 3D view, then print out a plan to help you make a model of the shape out of cardboard or paper. Finally, you can share your net with your friends by email, facebook, or whatever, so they, too, can enjoy your masterpiece.
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.
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.
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.
This money counting memory game allows kids from the United States, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada the EU and Singapore to practice counting money in a familiar game
Dinosaur Dodger is inspired by a paradox in probability, called the Absent Minded Driver Paradox. You need to advise some lost explorers whether to go straight or turn off the track. You choose how likely each choice is, and see if your choice helps get more explorers safely home. Helps develop kids' intuition for probability, and (if they look up the strategies and tips blog post) fraction arithmetic too.
Peg Solitaire is a classic logic puzzle. At the start, you have a board full of pegs, with just one empty hole. The pegs jump over each other one by one, and when you jump over a peg, you remove it. The goal is to have just one peg left at the end. It's a very challenging puzzle, with very simple rules.
In the brain game Primary Colors players are presented with a grid of colored beads. By jumping bead over bead, every bead must be changed to red, green or blue. There are 24 built-in puzzles to try, or you can ask the computer to generate random puzzles, or even design your own puzzles and link to them from facebook, twitter or your blog.
Color Switcher is a single-player puzzle game. A collection of colored beads is arranged on the board. Jump over a bead and it changes color. Can you switch the color of every bead on the board? This game, playable online, comes with hundreds of pre-set puzzles for you to match your wits against. Have fun!
The Adding Fractions Quiz is a quiz game like the other fractions quiz games on this site. Solve fraction addition problems to get to the final goal. The problems get tougher and tougher the further you progress.
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.
Play Mancala Online at this page! Mancala is a traditional game, played in many variations (with many different names) all over the world. This online mancala game lets you pit your wits against your computer - making the computer as smart or as silly as you like first, of course! The rules of mancala are simple - pick up some seeds out of a hole on your side of the board, then drop them one by one in successive holes around the board.
The Volume Measuring Puzzle is a classic puzzle. The goal is to measure out the a certain volume of water. You have two cups you can use, unfortunately, neither cup is the correct size for the job! So you need to pour water from one cup to the other, and back to the water source repeatedly until finally one of the cups contains the correct amount. This web page contains two playable versions (one with two cups, one with three) and some tips for offline play.
Think you're good at subtracting fractions? Try this Fraction subtraction quiz and test your skills. Use them to rescue a pegasus, spaceship or a clownfish.
- "online" means "interactive",
- "interactive" means "fun", and
- "fun" means "learning".
No matter what game a kid plays, if it's fun, they'll learn. They'll practice the skills the game requires. They'll commit to memory the information needed to win.
This being the case, surely it's best for a loving parent or teacher (such as yourself) to guide the games a student plays?
The whole purpose of this site is to make it easy for you to find "math games" for kids. Games where the skills and information needed are mathematical in nature.
This page collects together some of the best online math games I've discovered. Math games that combine graphics, sound and the power of the web to provide an interactive learning experience that your kids will call "plain old fun".
First, though, let me mention the interactive online math games found on this site itself. Please bear with me for a short while...
Sugar Sugar is a cool geometry game. Sugar pours out from a place near the top of the screen, and your goal is to make the sugar fall into the correct cups. You do this by drawing on the screen with the mouse, and watching as sprinkles of sugar trickle down the lines you draw. Challenging and fun!This is the Online Traffic Jam Game. Traffic Jam Game is the famous game where you have to move the red car out of the traffic jammed parking lot. This free online version has hundreds of puzzles, as well as links to PC, Mac and Android versions you can buy.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?Math Frozen Bubble is an online interactive bubble buster game that also helps kids practice their arithmetic. Good for grade 4 and up.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.Get your kids using this Spirograph Applet, and watch them make beautiful patterns. While they are enjoying the artwork, you can read here about the math they are learning!The Simplifying Fractions Quiz is a quiz like the other fractions quizzes on this size - you help your avatar reach their goal by answering fractions questions. In this case, the fractions questions are about fraction simplification.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.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.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!If you're good at (or need practice at) dividing fractions, try this Dividing Fractions QuizThis Weekly Puzzle Google Gadget will show you a new math puzzle every week. If you don't want to visit the web page each week, you can put the gadget on your own web page, or on your personalized google start page.The Equivalent Fractions Quiz is an online quiz for testing whether kids know how to do equivalent fractions. Take a ride on a spaceship, or help a pegasus raid an evil magician's castle!The Multiplying Fractions Quiz is yet another fractions quiz game, this time for multiplication. See if you can help the spaceship reach the stars of the milky way!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!Design and make your own Paper Polyhedra right in your web browser with this java applet. You can design beautiful symmetric shapes with an interactiove 3D view, then print out a plan to help you make a model of the shape out of cardboard or paper. Finally, you can share your net with your friends by email, facebook, or whatever, so they, too, can enjoy your masterpiece.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.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.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.This money counting memory game allows kids from the United States, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada the EU and Singapore to practice counting money in a familiar gameDinosaur Dodger is inspired by a paradox in probability, called the Absent Minded Driver Paradox. You need to advise some lost explorers whether to go straight or turn off the track. You choose how likely each choice is, and see if your choice helps get more explorers safely home. Helps develop kids' intuition for probability, and (if they look up the strategies and tips blog post) fraction arithmetic too.Peg Solitaire is a classic logic puzzle. At the start, you have a board full of pegs, with just one empty hole. The pegs jump over each other one by one, and when you jump over a peg, you remove it. The goal is to have just one peg left at the end. It's a very challenging puzzle, with very simple rules.In the brain game Primary Colors players are presented with a grid of colored beads. By jumping bead over bead, every bead must be changed to red, green or blue. There are 24 built-in puzzles to try, or you can ask the computer to generate random puzzles, or even design your own puzzles and link to them from facebook, twitter or your blog.Color Switcher is a single-player puzzle game. A collection of colored beads is arranged on the board. Jump over a bead and it changes color. Can you switch the color of every bead on the board? This game, playable online, comes with hundreds of pre-set puzzles for you to match your wits against. Have fun!The Adding Fractions Quiz is a quiz game like the other fractions quiz games on this site. Solve fraction addition problems to get to the final goal. The problems get tougher and tougher the further you progress.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.Play Mancala Online at this page! Mancala is a traditional game, played in many variations (with many different names) all over the world. This online mancala game lets you pit your wits against your computer - making the computer as smart or as silly as you like first, of course! The rules of mancala are simple - pick up some seeds out of a hole on your side of the board, then drop them one by one in successive holes around the board.The Volume Measuring Puzzle is a classic puzzle. The goal is to measure out the a certain volume of water. You have two cups you can use, unfortunately, neither cup is the correct size for the job! So you need to pour water from one cup to the other, and back to the water source repeatedly until finally one of the cups contains the correct amount. This web page contains two playable versions (one with two cups, one with three) and some tips for offline play.Think you're good at subtracting fractions? Try this Fraction subtraction quiz and test your skills. Use them to rescue a pegasus, spaceship or a clownfish.Now for some excellent or less well-known online interactive math games on other sites. The list below contains games that I think are really worth drawing attention to. It's not meant to be a complete list of the web's online math resources!
- The Lemonade Stand leads a child in a lemonade selling adventure! The player must make decisions about how much of each ingredient to buy, and what price to set for a cup of lemonade. Sales depend on the weather, of course. Kids will learn a whole gamut of skills, from basic money skills(arithmetic), through to economics concepts (price versus demand).
- Ghost Blasters is the second game I found that is really worth drawing your attention to! Blast away at "unfriendly" ghosts - how do you tell which ghosts are unfriendly? By the number they wear!
- Math 4 Children has quite a collection of flash-based math games. Explore and enjoy!
- Prongo has a nice two-player addition challenge. It's more fun than a plain old worksheet...
Well, that's all for now. I hope I can expand this list of interactive online math games soon!
Yours, Dr Mike...
