Homework Math Games

Board Games

• Kids from preschool to early elementary will find homework fun through board games. Consider making your own board games with the children, as this will also engage their spatial and psychomotor skills. The basic materials are sheets of cardboard, a pair of scissors, colored paper, glue and drawing implements.

  The board game Incey Wincey Spider also requires one spider token for each player and two dice: one is a standard die, and the other is a weather die with drawings of a sun and a cloud of rain.

  Draw a huge pipe on the base board and write the numbers zero to 20 from the bottom of the pipe to the top. The players take turns throwing the dice. The standard die shows the number of moves. If the weather die shows the sun, then the movement is up, or addition. If it shows the rain, then the movement is down, or subtraction. For kids who are a little older, a game of Monopoly will also be an exciting arithmetic game.

Pretend Games

• Math is a skill used in many professions. You can hone a child's arithmetic skills as well as her business-mindedness by playing pretend games. Use dolls, action figures, playhouses and play money. You can even dress up in costumes and use real coins as payment. Pretend that you're in a department store and take turns as salesclerk and shopper.

  Another conducive setting for practicing the child's sense for numbers is a restaurant or coffee shop game, where the menu has food prices, and more computation is necessary. A lemonade stand is a classic business where a child can train her math skills, although as homework, this works best as a pretend game rather than the real thing, especially if there will be too few customers.

Computer Games

• There is plenty of software both in CDs and on the Internet that offer students helpful fun with their homework. Websites like Coolmath.com feature games such as Castle Defense, where the goal is to protect the castle by buying weapons. This hones subtraction and addition skills since the player has to calculate if he has enough money or if he has to sell.

  Another website, Math Is Fun, contains both games and discussions of mathematical principles. One of the site's activities, Math Match, requires skills ranging from shape recognition to algebra. This is a memory game where the player opens two cards at each turn aiming to open the two cards that match. With the operation and algebra levels, the player matches the equation with the answer.