What Are The Games To Make Maths Fun For Kids?

Math doesn’t have to be scary for children, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t intimidating to them. Here are some ideas to help your kid enjoy math more. Many children find math to be difficult and even worthless, but with these strategies, you may show them that there is more to math than merely adding two and two together.

Integrating math challenges into games kids already enjoy or making math practise into a friendly competition is sure to keep even the most reluctant student interested. A bit of imagination can go a long way towards making your youngster look forwards to what might otherwise be considered a boring task.

Mathematics is notoriously challenging for young learners, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Many fun games are available for kids to play, and they all have one thing in common: they make it simpler for kids to grasp basic mathematical ideas. A number of excellent games that can make learning mathematics more fun for kids are discussed in this blog post. If you want to learn more about this, keep reading!

You want what’s best for your kids, and part of that is making sure they have a solid early childhood learning. If you sign up with Dr. Study, you can rest assured that your child is receiving a top-notch, individualised early childhood education.

Fun Math Games You Can Play in Fifteen Minutes or Less

5 Minutes

Simon Says, “Geometry!”

To spice up the classic game, have the youngsters use only their arms to draw parallel and perpendicular lines, acute, right, and obtuse angles, and 0-, 90-, and 180-degree angles.

Challenge: Test your students’ mettle by speeding up the commands and seeing how well they respond. 

Round The Block

Put the students in a square formation. One of them needs a ball and a math problem with multiple-choice answers (counting in twos, naming shapes with right angles, etc). The student quickly tosses the ball to the person next to him before answering. A ball is passed swiftly around the square by the kids, and the student has to respond before the ball returns to him.

Challenge: After the right answer is given, the kid holding the ball is assigned the task of passing it in the opposite direction around the circle. 

Bouncing Sums

Place a series of numbers on a beach ball (use a permanent marker or sticky labels). Throw the ball to one kid and have her shout out the number that her right thumb lands on. Then she passes it along to the next student, who adds his own number to the total. Keeping adding up for the next five minutes and writing it down. Create a graph and update it after each game. What day did you make the most money? Among the lowest?

Challenge:  Use any combination of fractions, decimals, or negative and positive integers.

Straw Poll

Pose a question, and then have the kids vote on it by inserting a straw into one of many plastic cups that have been labelled with possible answers. Results can be graphed by younger students and ratios and percentages calculated by older students.

Challenge: Think about how many votes would be in each cup if you polled the complete student population and assumed that each answer received the same number of votes. What if a survey were taken of your community? Just which state are we talking about?

Shaving Equations

​​Students can “write” solutions to equations in shaving cream that has been placed on their desks.

Challenge:

1. Get the students to come up with a challenge.
2. On your signal, have them switch places with the person at the desk next to them and work out the problem.
3. Before moving on to a new question, have the students examine their responses independently.

10 Minutes

Playing these entertaining math games for just 10 minutes will get the brain moving.

Hopscotch Maths

Build a calculator-shaped hopscotch board. Add the square root symbol and the negative integer sign for the older students. The steps involve students hopping from one number to another, followed by an operation, another number, the equal sign, and the final answer. For solving problems with answers that contain two digits, students can divide their final hop so that their left foot falls on the digit in the tens place and their right foot lands on the digit in the one’s place.

Challenge: Each player takes turns tossing a stone onto a number and attempting to avoid that number in the equation.

Global Probability

Water makes up over 70% of the planet’s surface. Get a group of students together and have them stand in a circle, then have them toss around an inflatable globe, keeping track of whether their left thumb landed on land or sea. That student then sits down and passes the ball to another student in the class. As everyone is settled in their seats, count the number of times each student’s thumb touched the water and the number of times their thumb touched the land. Keep track of the percentage and try the activity again on other days. (The ratio ought to stabilise somewhere around 7:3, or 70%, over time.)

Challenge: The objective is to calculate, given the relative sizes of the continents, the odds of a person’s thumb landing on any one of them.

Sweet Maths

This can be demonstrated with a document camera and a single package of Skittles or M&Ms, or students can be given their own. For younger students, a color-coded pie chart displaying their packages’ contents is a fun and educational activity. Older children can figure out the percentage of each colour of candy to the overall amount of candies in their bags.

Challenge: Have all students contribute their data to a single graph and then have them all compare their ratios to the class average.

It’s In The Cards

Assign the values 1 (ace), 11 (jack), 12 (queen), and 13 (king) to the playing cards in a game of War, with the face cards valued at their usual 10 (two through ten) (for younger children, limit the game to number cards only). Each student in a pair lays down two face-up cards and subtracts the lower number from the higher one. The four cards go to the player who has the highest score. If both players’ totals are the same, they turn over two additional cards and play continues until someone wins.

Challenge: Use the two cards to make a fraction and see who has the bigger one in the challenge. Let’s pretend they’re equal, then switch roles and do it again until someone wins.

Priceless Verse

​​Give each group of four or five students a dollar bill, two quarters, three dimes, four nickels, and five pennies to use as play money.After listening to Shel Silverstein’s poem “Smart,” have the kids trade money. Try polling the younger students on whether or not they think the individual who started with a dollar got a decent deal. Older students can figure out how much money the kid in the poem gave up in each transaction.

Challenge: Figure out the percentage of money lost in each transaction by using a calculator.

15 Minutes

Use fruit, dice, and even Twister to quickly introduce mathematical principles.

Weighing In

Arrange an assortment of citrous, banana, cucumber, kiwi, tomato, and bell pepper slices. You can evaluate your pupils’ knowledge of relative food densities by asking them to rank the foods from lightest to heavy. The predictions can be tested with a balancing scale, and the meals can be rearranged based on their actual weights.

Challenge: 

Make it a game to cut all the fruit in half. Ask the class to examine the impact of density on the weight of the fruit or vegetable.

String Them Up

Height or arm span? Distribute students into three groups, those who believe their arm span will be more than their height, those who believe it will be less than their height, and those who believe it will be equal to their height. Give each pair a different length of string to measure and test, then sort them back together.

Challenge: Prove your estimation skills by comparing the length of one arm or leg to your own height, and then measuring the actual value.

Twister Maths

On the circles of a Twister mat, you can put labels with numbers, shapes, or pictures of coins. Give each student an equation, a description of a shape, or a sum of money, then have them put their hand or foot on the answer.

Challenge: Write numbers that end in zero on the mat, then call out the numbers and tell the kids to round up or down to the nearest answer.

Looking for a primary school program? Dr. Study has a programme that helps kids learn English, Math, Science, and Humanities. It can be done online or in person.

One-Metre Dash

Give each student in a group a ruler, a pencil, and a piece of paper. Give them a few minutes to write down the lengths of three things in the room that they think will add up to 1 metres. Then give them five minutes to measure the items, write down their lengths, and add them up. Have each group report what they did. Whose number was closest to one metre?

Challenge: Students measure to the nearest 1/8 inch, then convert their measurements to decimals.

Number Builders

Give six to nine-sided dice to each pair of students. Set up spaces where the digits of a number can go. (Their numbers should all have the same number of digits, from four to nine.) Before you play, choose whether the winner will be the highest or lowest number. Each student rolls the die and fills in a blank. You can’t change a number once it’s been written down. Roll the dice until there are no more empty spaces, and then compare the numbers. If there is time, have the students subtract their numbers to find the difference between them.

Challenge: Make a fraction or decimal instead of an integer.

Ways to Make Math Fun for Elementary Kids

Make It a Hands-on Experience

Have you ever been in a meeting or workshop where the presenter seemed to go on and on for what seemed like forever? Do you get fidgety, or does your mind wander somewhere else? Children feel the same way. You could try turning a lesson that would normally be a lecture and a worksheet into something more interactive. You could, for example, have your kids put numbers on an interactive number line or try to guess how many things are in a mystery bag. Both of these activities are great ways to get people interested in math.

Use Picture Books

There are a lot of great picture books that you could use in your math lesson. From counting to multiplying and everything in between, you can find content on this site. The read-aloud method is a great way to get kids interested in the math skill they are going to learn.

Play Games

Who doesn’t like playing a fun game? Students can have fun and learn by playing games, whether they are printed out or played on a computer or other electronic device. There are a lot of different kinds of games that can help you learn new math concepts or review old ones. At the top of the list are BINGO, War, and Concentration, but the list goes on and on…..

Encourage Maths Talk

We can all agree that kids like to talk to each other. Set an example for how to talk about math in a meaningful way. Then, make sure there’s enough time in your math class for these conversations to happen.

Ask Math Questions That Are Fun and Challenging

It has something to do with what was said before. Kids like to talk! So, we should ask them more questions with no right or wrong answer. This type of question is best shown by asking, “Why did you use this method to solve the problem?” You should also try to ask questions that have more than one possible answer. The kids will want to find all of them and keep them all.

Implement Engaging Routines

There are times when it’s not bad at all to say something once or twice. Children do best in places with rules (even if they fight against them sometimes). Your students will know what you want from them because you have set up routines. As long as you make the routines interesting, the students will listen to what you have to say and look forward to what comes next.

Focus on the Kids

When we teach them using examples from the real world, they do better. For example, you could put the students’ names in the word problems you give them or have them do a math activity to get to know each other at the start of the school year.

Go Online

Visit one of the many cool math websites or download one of the many math-related apps to brush up on your math skills. One of the games that students like to play the most is called Kahoot! and Let’s Play the Math Game!

Bring In Real Objects

When kids were in primary school, the lessons that stuck with them the most were the ones where the teacher used real-world examples to explain a concept. Teaching math concepts like geometry, measurement, graphing, addition, and just about any other math concept gives students a chance to show their creativity. You could use a pumpkin to show how to add, or you could use real objects to figure out how to solve a word problem.

Get Up And Move

We know that children and adults learn in different ways, so we suggest that the lesson plan include some activities that require the students to get up and move around. It could be a short math break or a longer activity where the students have to put themselves into different groups. In either case, the people in your class who learn best by doing will be grateful to you.

Add Cheers

If we create a positive and encouraging environment, it may be possible for some of our children to get over their fears about math. Cheers are a good way to get students more excited about learning. When students help and inspire each other, the results are even better.

Draw Maths Models

Drawing can be fun and teach you something at the same time. Under the CPA model of teaching math, students start by playing with real objects, then move on to drawing pictures to represent models, and finally use only numbers and mathematical symbols (abstract for them). Give students many chances to draw pictures to show what they know. It’s where you can tell if the students have understood the idea or not.

Use Maths Manipulatives

Everyone can be sneaky with math! People often think that the only people who can benefit from math manipulatives are kindergarten students. They are useful in all of the elementary school grades. Referring back to the CPA model once more, this step is often skipped by teachers. Still, this stage is necessary for conceptual knowledge to be learned. You can also make your own school if none of the ones in your area are right for you.

Review With Maths Task Cards

Review doesn’t have to be just about memorising and repeating. With the help of math task cards, your students can practise and improve their math skills in fun and interesting ways. You can use them for partner drills, competitive games, or even a SCOOT game.

Integrate Science And Social Studies

Students pay a lot of attention in class when they are learning about science or social studies. Use the students’ natural interest in the things listed above by tying them into your math lessons. For example, if you were teaching about goods and services in social studies, money would be a great way to tie everything together. If you want to learn more about plants, you should use a ruler to figure out how long their parts are. Use your imagination!

Encourage Students to Learn Together

Set up a culture where students are encouraged and rewarded for working together, whether in pairs or in smaller groups. As a result, they are able to solve math problems and hold each other accountable. They will also enjoy working together with their classmates.

Include Parents

Yes! It’s NOT an option! Talk to your child’s parents about different ways to make math more fun. You can even give parents ideas for simple, hands-on activities they can do with their kids at home. In this way, children get the message at home and at school that math doesn’t have to be scary.

Make It Relatable

You could try doing things during that time of year that involve math. It might depend on the time of year. Is it also possible that a special holiday is coming up? If you use different kinds of materials, you can easily make the same math topic, like addition, seem like something new (ex. pumpkins, apples, spiders,, etc.)

Go Outside

Everyone needs fresh air. So, take the same math lesson outside. Grab some chalk instead of paper and a pencil. Your children will appreciate it.

Celebrate Special Maths Events

Make a BIG deal out of those special times of the year that are devoted to math. Especially the 100th day of school and the day that celebrates pi. Even though these are the “Big 2,” you can still think of creative ways to celebrate your students’ math skills (i.e. knowing their multiplication facts).

Are you looking for a way to get a better score on the IELTS?? Dr. Study uses task-based language teaching and dynamic assessment methods to give students real IELTS tasks that help them improve their ability to think critically and on their own.

Conclusion

Mathematics is notoriously challenging for young learners, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. There are many fun games available for kids to play that make it simpler for them to grasp basic mathematical ideas. These include Simon Says, “Geometry!” and Round The Block, which involve a ball and a math problem with multiple-choice answers. Bouncing Sums involves placing a series of numbers on a beach ball. These games can be played in 15 minutes or less.

The most important details in this text are the various math games that can be played to get the brain moving. These games include a straw poll, shaving equations, hopscotch math, and global probability. The straw poll involves inserting a straw into one of many plastic cups that have been labelled with possible answers. The shaving equations involve students “writing” solutions to equations in shaving cream. Hopscotch Maths involves students hopping from one number to another, followed by an operation, another number, the equal sign, and the final answer.

Global Probability involves students tossing a stone onto a number and attempting to avoid that number in the equation. Finally, 10 minutes of global probability involve students standing in a circle and tossing around an inflatable globe, keeping track of whether their left thumb landed on land or sea. The objective of this activity is to calculate the odds of a person’s thumb landing on any one of the continents. It can be demonstrated with a document camera and a single package of Skittles or M&Ms, or students can be given their own. The challenge is to use the two cards to make a fraction and see who has the bigger one in the challenge.

After listening to Shel Silverstein’s poem “Smart,” have the kids trade money and figure out the percentage of money lost in each transaction by using a calculator. Arrange an assortment of citrous, banana, cucumber, kiwi, tomato, and bell pepper slices and ask students to rank them from lightest to heavy. Test their estimation skills by comparing the length of one arm or leg to their own height and measuring the actual value. Twister Maths on the circles of a Twister mat, write numbers that end in zero on the mat, and call out the numbers and tell the kids to round up or down to the nearest answer. One-Metre Dash gives each student a ruler, pencil, and a piece of paper to write down the lengths of three things in the room that they think will add up to 1 metres.

Number Builders give six to nine-sided dice to each pair of students to set up spaces where the digits of a number can go. The most important details in this text are the ways to make math fun for elementary kids, such as making it a hands-on experience, using picture books, playing games, encouraging maths talk, and asking questions that are fun and challenging. These activities can help students learn new math concepts or review old ones. The most important details are to implement engaging routines, focus on the kids, bring in real-world examples, get up and move, visit math websites, download math-related apps, bring in Kahoot! and Let’s Play the Math Game, draw maths models, and add cheers to create a positive and encouraging environment.

These activities can help students get over their fears about math and encourage them to help and inspire each other. The CPA model of teaching math involves students playing with real objects, drawing pictures to represent models, and using only numbers and mathematical symbols. Math manipulatives are useful in all elementary school grades, and review with math task cards can be fun and interesting. Integrate science and social studies into math lessons, and encourage students to learn together. Set up a culture where students are encouraged and rewarded for working together, whether in pairs or in smaller groups. Include parents, make it relatable, go outside, celebrate special events, and use task-based language teaching and dynamic assessment methods to help students improve their ability to think critically and on their own.

Content Summary

• Here are some ideas to help your kid enjoy math more.
• Many children find math to be difficult and even worthless, but with these strategies, you may show them that there is more to math than merely adding two and two together.
• Integrating math challenges into games kids already enjoy or making math practise into a friendly competition is sure to keep even the most reluctant student interested.
• Mathematics is notoriously challenging for young learners, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring.
• Many fun games are available for kids to play, and they all have one thing in common: they make it simpler for kids to grasp basic mathematical ideas.
• A number of excellent games that can make learning mathematics more fun for kids are discussed in this blog post.
• If you want to learn more about this, keep reading!
• ​​Students can “write” solutions to equations in shaving cream that has been placed on their desks.
• Playing these entertaining math games for just 10 minutes will get the brain moving.
• As everyone is settled in their seats, count the number of times each student’s thumb touched the water and the number of times their thumb touched the land.
• The objective is to calculate, given the relative sizes of the continents, the odds of a person’s thumb landing on any one of them.
• This can be demonstrated with a document camera and a single package of Skittles or M&Ms, or students can be given their own.
• Older children can figure out the percentage of each colour of candy to the overall amount of candies in their bags.
• Assign the values 1 (ace), 11 (jack), 12 (queen), and 13 (king) to the playing cards in a game of War, with the face cards valued at their usual 10 (two through ten) (for younger children, limit the game to number cards only).
• The four cards go to the player who has the highest score.
• ​​Give each group of four or five students a dollar bill, two quarters, three dimes, four nickels, and five pennies to use as play money.
• After listening to Shel Silverstein’s poem “Smart,” have the kids trade money.
• You can evaluate your pupils’ knowledge of relative food densities by asking them to rank the foods from lightest to heavy.
• Ask the class to examine the impact of density on the weight of the fruit or vegetable.
• On the circles of a Twister mat, you can put labels with numbers, shapes, or pictures of coins.
• Give each student in a group a ruler, a pencil, and a piece of paper.
• There are a lot of great picture books that you could use in your math lesson.
• The read-aloud method is a great way to get kids interested in the math skill they are going to learn.
• Set an example for how to talk about math in a meaningful way.
• Then, make sure there’s enough time in your math class for these conversations to happen.
• There are times when it’s not bad at all to say something once or twice.
• Children do best in places with rules (even if they fight against them sometimes).
• Your students will know what you want from them because you have set up routines.
• When we teach them using examples from the real world, they do better.
• For example, you could put the students’ names in the word problems you give them or have them do a math activity to get to know each other at the start of the school year.
• Visit one of the many cool math websites or download one of the many math-related apps to brush up on your math skills.
• One of the games that students like to play the most is called Kahoot!
• When kids were in primary school, the lessons that stuck with them the most were the ones where the teacher used real-world examples to explain a concept.
• Teaching math concepts like geometry, measurement, graphing, addition, and just about any other math concept gives students a chance to show their creativity.
• We know that children and adults learn in different ways, so we suggest that the lesson plan include some activities that require the students to get up and move around.
• If we create a positive and encouraging environment, it may be possible for some of our children to get over their fears about math.
• Cheers are a good way to get students more excited about learning.
• Under the CPA model of teaching math, students start by playing with real objects, then move on to drawing pictures to represent models, and finally use only numbers and mathematical symbols (abstract for them).
• Give students many chances to draw pictures to show what they know.
• Everyone can be sneaky with math!
• People often think that the only people who can benefit from math manipulatives are kindergarten students.
• They are useful in all of the elementary school grades.
• Referring back to the CPA model once more, this step is often skipped by teachers.
• You can also make your own school if none of the ones in your area are right for you.
• Review doesn’t have to be just about memorising and repeating.
• With the help of math task cards, your students can practise and improve their math skills in fun and interesting ways.
• Students pay a lot of attention in class when they are learning about science or social studies.
• Use the students’ natural interest in the things listed above by tying them into your math lessons.
• Set up a culture where students are encouraged and rewarded for working together, whether in pairs or in smaller groups.
• They will also enjoy working together with their classmates.
• Talk to your child’s parents about different ways to make math more fun.
• You can even give parents ideas for simple, hands-on activities they can do with their kids at home.
• In this way, children get the message at home and at school that math doesn’t have to be scary.
• You could try doing things during that time of year that involve math.
• Make a BIG deal out of those special times of the year that are devoted to math.
• Even though these are the “Big 2,” you can still think of creative ways to celebrate your students’ math skills (i.e. knowing their multiplication facts).

Frequently Asked Questions

Author

Dr. Olga Abeysekera

Dr Olga Abeysekera, founder of Dr Study Tutoring and the Dr Progress Group Pty Ltd, is passionate about transforming education through innovative and personalised tutoring. With a PhD in Management from Monash University and a background in both academic research and private tutoring, she has a deep commitment to helping students excel.
Her holistic approach at Dr Study Tutoring emphasises not only academic success but also the development of lifelong skills, ensuring that each student receives the best education and support possible. Dr Olga’s dedication to continuous improvement drives her mission to inspire a love for learning that lasts a lifetime.

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