When you’re trying to drive home key math concepts, making the repetition and practice into a game can help keep things interesting and fun! While there are a multitude of math games that involve one or more players and some simple props, there are also plenty of online math games to check out. Playing a computer game online can help break the monotony a bit by switching mediums from card games. Listed below are a few websites that are worth checking out when you’re looking for online math games.
Primary Games: Math
This website has more than 1,000 games in its database, including online math games, science games, and reading games. The math portion of the site is broken down by grade level, and you can browse games designed for preschool all the way up to sixth grade. There is plenty of content for any grade level, and enough games for each specific math concept that you’ll never run out of fresh material to challenge and motivate yourself or your child.
All of the games are designed to be fun while also working on key concepts. Some may work on more than one, but all of them will clearly indicate what idea is being focused on in the description. Chances are with their selection, you’ll never get bored while learning new math ideas!
HOODA MATH
At HOODA MATH, you’ll find a great selection of online games, including many flash games with a math focus. You can narrow the games down by grade level, from Kindergarten through high school. You can also find online math games by specific subject area: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, algebra, and integers.
The selection of online math games at HOODA MATH also includes mobile games. You can easily operate these with a touchscreen mobile device, such as a tablet or smartphone. This makes for a great road trip tool, as you can play the games on any device that has access to the Internet whether you’re in the living room or in the car!
MathPlayground
What MathPlayground might lack in quantity, it makes up for it in quality. These games are great and cover all of the focus areas in elementary school mathematics classes. You’ll find an assortment of math and logic games, as well as word problem games that can help visually-based learners.
The concepts on the MathPlayground website are somewhat broken up into different grade levels, but most of the online math games have a range of grades that are targeted, such as grades two through five. While this might make it a bit difficult to pinpoint which games may be right by only reading the title, a quick spin through the game’s description should help clear up any issues of whether it will be appropriately challenging. There’s nothing more frustrating than having a game that’s too difficult or too easy.
Other Ideas
Aside from specific online math games, you can actually learn math from many regular games, as well! For example, take the Candy Crush app. If multi-part addition is the learning concept you’d like to focus on, try to add up the moves for each level. If you played three levels and had 11 moves, then 14, then 18, figure out how many moves it took to complete all three levels in total. Your answer is the solution to a three addend addition problem! You can also determine how many more moves it took for the second level than the first. That’s another problem that now deals with subtraction!
Any moves- and points-based game can become a math problem, so you don’t need to solely rely on online math games. You can track how many points per move you scored on a specific level, for example, if division is the topic you want to work on. Or if you want to focus on multiplication, designate each move as a certain number of points, and try to figure out how high your score would be after a specific number of moves. You might find that after you run some simple math, it’s way easier to get a high score!
If you’re traveling and don’t have access to the Internet for online math games, all you really need is some creative thinking to turn any ordinary app on your smartphone or other device into a great learning experience. As long as you can find a way to introduce a reason for performing the math operation, you’ll never run into a situation where boredom sets in. And sometimes the best way to learn is by having fun!
Photo by Jimmie
Megan L.