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10 Educational Games That Help Teach Math

By July 5, 2023July 21st, 20237 Comments

Sometimes you just need a few old-fashioned card games or board games to “edutain” your children … and what better way to help them apply key math skills like addition and subtraction?

Here’s a quick list of educational games that area homeschoolers have found helpful for indoor time (and instilling mathematics along the way):

  • Farkle.

A classic to delight the whole family, all you’ll need are six dice and some way to record the number of points you’ll accrue.

  • Ninety-nine.

All players receive three tokens and must keep their total below ninety-nine points, or else lose a token. A handy summary of rules and guidelines can be found here. The last player with a token remaining wins!

  • Math War. 

From addition and subtraction to multiplication and division, children can spend hours pitting their skills against each other to see who gets the highest number of correct answers.

  • Continuum Games Number Crunch. 

Players flip cards until they match, then go head to head to see who can solve the problem first. Designed for 3 or more players ages 5 and older.

  • Hi Ho! Cherry-O.

A counting game for preschoolers, children take turns spinning the arrow to pick pretend cherries, blueberries, apples and oranges and fill their baskets. Whoever is the first to have 10 fruits in their basket wins!

  • Sum Swamp.

Children race one another to journey out of the Sum Swamp by adding and subtracting numbers on the dice. Special squares such as Even or Odds heighten the play experience, and this game can grow in intricacy as your children develop their math skills.

  • Other classics.

As always, don’t forget to add to your repertoire other classics such as Chutes and Ladders, Uno, Yahtzee and hopscotch.

Counting real money can also be a game of its own, too. Just stuff a jar with loose change and get your children to find out how much cash really is in there. (It can help mom keep track, too!)

We have updated this blog post, originally published in June 2015, for timeliness and detail.

What other educational games have you found helpful? Let us know in the comments!

Shanxi Omoniyi

Shanxi Omoniyi (@ShanxiO on Twitter) is MPE's online content director. A homeschool alumna, Shanxi graduated from the University of Kansas with degrees in journalism and English. Her company, Wordspire Media, helps businesses and nonprofits share their stories through content marketing, social media management, and email marketing.

7 Comments

  • Mary Gibson says:

    And lest we forget Spelling and Vocabulary, you cannot beat Scrabble for teaching both!

  • Heather Ventura says:

    We love games at our house. Some of our math favorites are Sleeping Queens, Mythmatical Battles, Blokus, Prime Climb, and Architecto. We also like pattern blocks and cards and Pentominoes.

  • Cay says:

    Don’t forget Word Rummy (spelling), world and US geography puzzles, solar system puzzles, etc! At our house, we also stock up on educational board games like Professor Noggin trivia games, Snapshots Across America, SomeBody (anatomy), MathAttack, Historical Conquest, etc. For online games, they play Starfall (great for K-2), ABCYa (covers all the core topics), Prodigy math (goes all the way up to 8th grade math!), Chesskids, iCivics, plus there’s a ton of other sites — all free. That on top of literature reading, educational videos, and home ec, and we usually book about 15-20 hours a week in lessons even during the summer.

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