Play FUN math games and watch the learning begin.
If there is one thing I know about kids, it’s that they love to play. Play sports, play video games, play imagination games, play board games, play, play, play! And the more they have fun playing the games, the more often they want to do it.
Imaging doing the same with your child’s math skills. Leveling up the games they already love to include learning just revs up the memory to retain the information even more. Scientific research shows that emotions are connected to memories and fun memories tied to learning make it even more accessible to recall those facts.
How can you play fun games with your kids to bring learning to life? Here are three ideas:
1. Shape Scavenger Hunt
Everyone can have fun searching for shapes at home or at a destination. We play scavenger hunts all the time to find fun shapes around the house, around a classroom or even at a park or playground.
- Circles – plates, coasters, and clocks
- Triangles – pennants for your favorite sports team and crackers
- Rectangles – doors, windows, tables, and monkey bars
- Squares – tiles, pillows, and picture frames
- Spheres – balls and a globe
- Cylinders – Water bottles, paper towel rolls, and soup cans.
- Rectangular Prism – tissue box, cereal box, and storage box.
Look for more shapes too including ovals (ellipse), diamonds (rhombus), cubes, pyramids, triangular prism, and semi-circles. For even more fun, count the number of shapes that you find on this exciting shape adventure. You can see who finds the most of each shape.
2. Time to Race
Relay races or timing how long it takes to walk around the neighborhood are fun ways to understand time. Many sports including swimming and track rely on time to determine the winner. You can race your children around the yard, at the playground or at the park to see who is the fasted. Depending on the age you may want to give them a head start or just let them win. This game is all about having fun and learning about time. Bring technology into the fun to measure steps or use a stopwatch app to measure the winning time. Keeping score or comparing the times will enhance your child’s learning and understanding of time.
3. Make Many with Dice
Recently, we began developing fun games with kids for the math concept called “Make 10”. The idea is to give them a first number then have them find the missing addend that equals the sum 10. This can be for any sum “Make 20” or even “Make 100”. Let’s talk fun and bring this concept to life with dice. Kids can roll one or more dice, get the sum of the numbers showing on top and find the missing number to reach the number needed. As an example, your child needs to “Make 20” and you roll 2 dice landing on a 6 and 5. The sum is eleven so how many more are needed to reach 20? Use a fun counting item like candy, dried pasta, cars, dolls, or building bricks to show how many you have and then see how many more need to be added to reach the number 20. By using dice and a fun item to count, it brings the learning to life much more than just showing their work and the answer on a worksheet.
These are just a few examples of the many games that Fun Wise® Math instructors play with your children to ignite their creativity, build a strong math foundation and boost their confidence.
At Fun Wise® Math, we’re passionate about creating fun interactive experiences empowering your child’s love of math to elevate their trajectory towards a brighter future. All of our programs – online and onsite tutoring programs, after school classes and field trips – are totally focused on bringing math to life by playing games. (Onsite or In-home are only available in Tampa, Fla.).
Contact us to learn how we can create a personal game plan for your child to produce this end equation for them:
Fun + Learning = Higher Academic Achievement