Elementary Math Games ~ Review

We recently have been making math practice fun with an ebook from The Critical Thinking Co.; called Elementary Math Games which is designed to be used for grades 3-5. However, since I’m limited to only Rebekah being in that grade range, we extended the range to include Quinton (2nd grade) and Eli (7th). You know, because it’s more fun to play games as a group.

Let me tell you more about Elementary Math Games. For this review, we received the downloadable version. (It is compatible with Windows only so make sure that you have a computer that meets those requirements.) There are twenty elementary math games in the 152 page book. However, there are several of the twenty games that have multiple variations. This means that they can practice the same or similar concept repeatedly without getting tired of one particular game.

Eli and Rebekah’s favorite game Let’s Sum UP: Odd or Even? requires only a pencil, paper, two dice and the printed Let’s Sum Up page from the book (for each participant.) The idea is that the student rolls the two dice. Then using the numbers rolled come up with an odd/even (determined ahead of time whether the goal is odd or even) number by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. Each round the student rolls the two dice five times and records the results on the Let’s Sum Up page. The winner is the student with the highest cummulative score from the five rounds.

There are many variations of Bingo cards which also made for fun games. These included positive intergers, equivalent fractions, mixed numbers, decimals to fractions, fractions to decimals, arabic numerals to Roman and vis versa. These would be especially fun with a larger group playing!

The supplies required for the games are easily accessible. Many of the games require a die(or dice), index cards are also frequently used for many of the games. Spinners or a random number generator are utilitzed for other games. Since it was a downloadable product, I could print those pages we need quickly and easily.

Elementary Math Games topics include:

Greater Than, Less Than
Math Vocabulary
Adding, Subtracting, Multiplying and Dividing
Fractions and Decimals
Place Value
Roman/Arabic Numbers
Primes, Composites, Perfect Squares, Factors and Multiples
Odd/ Even

Elementary Math Games would work well in a homeschool or classroom setting. The games are a great way to reinforce new math concepts but are equally as great for reviewing math lessons previously learned. In our case, Quinton learned some new math concepts while playing the games. Talk about a fun way to learn math! We have had fun with this review product!