Math games for kids

February 6, 2009 8:33 PM

I'm looking for math focused games for a first grader.

Board games or computer games are both cool. For computer games, web-based (ideally ad-free) or compatible with my mac (rather than requiring my buying some other game system) is best. My kid is basically at grade level with math, but is starting to say that she's "bad" at it, and I'm looking for ways to do math with her that she'll see as more fun - hopefully to distract her a bit from the bad vibes she's starting to pick up about the subject. Thanks!

posted by serazin to education (15 comments total)

Number Munchers!
posted by GleepGlop at 8:41 PM on February 6 [2 favorites has favorites]

There is a math arcade on Funbrain.
UpToTen over a thousand educational games and activities.
posted by Sailormom at 9:01 PM on February 6

My parents used Reader Rabbit for my sisters when they were that age, and it was fun and helped them a lot.
posted by sambosambo at 9:17 PM on February 6

Number Munchers! GleepGlop, I've been trying to remember the name of that game for years! That and Sir Add-A-Lot were the best! (The kids at school all liked Math Blaster, but I had standards...)
posted by phunniemee at 10:15 PM on February 6

I can't recomend a dart board enough! What kid doesn't like throwing sharp things at a target? you can make up your own ways of using the numbers hit, as in adding or subtracting. Or use the "official" games of 300 or 700
posted by Redhush at 10:16 PM on February 6

I liked Math Rescue and the 24 Game at around that age.
posted by narrativium at 10:37 PM on February 6

Ready? I suggest Set and Go.

Both are games about recognizing patterns, not arithmetic. Go has incredibly simple rules, but you can play it for a lifetime and never get bored. Set is one of these games where five-year-olds are probably better at it than anyone else.

'Liar's Dice' is an amazing game I only just recently learned; all you need are a bunch of dice (five per person), and a willingness to play a game entirely about deception. And probability.

Good luck! And good on you for the effort.
posted by kaibutsu at 10:53 PM on February 6

Zoombinis! (Amazon: all three games, or you can get each one for cheap.

Teaches the basics of logic, without seeming at all like a math/logic game.
posted by zippy at 11:21 PM on February 6

Coolmath-games.com has got loads of Flash-based games, as well as lessons and miscellaneous other stuff. My first grader's favorite game on there is Bloxorz. Admittedly, calling some of those games "math-based" is a bit of a stretch, in the sense that just about any game is arguably math-based.

Does your first grader have an allowance? If so, be sure to talk about how much she'll need to save up to buy this or that. Have her work out how much more she'll need to save, and how much she'll have left over. If she finds math useful to her, it'll make it much more interesting.
posted by Loudmax at 11:43 PM on February 6

Seconded: Number Munchers!
posted by neckro23 at 1:07 AM on February 7

We played card games with our daughter, especially ones that involved adding, keeping track of what's been payed, and odds. (Also, I'm not sure how good her math is, but to this day, no one beats my daughter at cards.)
posted by nax at 3:01 AM on February 7

In my classroom, we have a couple of math games that go in and out of vogue. One uses a deck of cards with the face cards removed. Play War, but instead of each of you putting down one card, put down two, and add them together. High sum wins. Our older kids do this with multiplication, too. We have a rule that if you don't agree with someone's math, you just gently say "Challenge." and double check it. Another one helps with place value and greater than/less than. Get n sets of 3 different colored 10 sided dice (n = how many people will be playing). I got them at my local gaming shop. They should be the kind that has a single digit, 0-9, not the kind from 00-90. Designate one color the hundreds, one the tens, one the units. All the players roll their set of dice, and high number wins. First person to reach some predetermined number of wins takes the game. You could also play it as low number wins, or she could roll her own problems with the dice.

You could do arts and crafts projects - make flash cards for math using stickers that she sticks on. Another idea I've heard is to have kids take an adding machine roll and simply write the numbers starting at 0 and going up from there. She could do math problems on the paper, also. There's just an attraction between kids and looooong pieces of paper. Also, just working more math into your daily life can help. Asking her to count your change, talk about how many cookies are left on the plate now that you've eaten 3, etc.

As for the underlying issue - "bad" could equal many things. She may see classmates doing more advanced work, and therefore think she must be behind. She may be getting praised by her teachers for her output, and not her effort, and be getting frustrated when things get hard. I try to say things like "I can tell you worked really hard on that!" instead of "Look how smart you are - you got them all right the first time!" Here's a good article on the subject.
posted by booksherpa at 6:52 AM on February 7

I was a Reader Rabbit fan (as mentioned by sambosambo), and his math loving counterpart Math Rabbit . Not sure where you can get them now, I played them when they were available on floppy disks, but I'm sure there's CD versions out there somewhere.
posted by Planet F at 7:18 AM on February 7

Thanks for the helpful answers so far. I've bookmarked some sites, and plan to incorporate a bunch of these suggestions. More ideas welcome if you think of 'em.
posted by serazin at 9:31 AM on February 7

The Little Professor or its modern equivalent.
posted by Muffy at 3:06 PM on February 7