Games are wonderful tools for all students. Games help students build fluency (being efficient, accurate, and flexible) and help make learning math fun. Games like Chutes and Ladders, CandyLand, Uno, Monopoly, Scrabble, Rummy, and the list goes on and on are great for math practice. We use these games to find countless opportunities to build math skills. Below are a list of websites that provide meaningful and well-rounded math games:

• Math Playground: 1st - 6th grade

• Greg Tang Math Games

• Calculation Nation by NCTM

• Splash Learn: Kindergarten - 5th grade

• Prodigy: Kindergarten - 8th grade

• ABCYa: Pre-K - 6th grade

• Cool Math 4 Kids

• Math Game Time: Pre-K - 7th

We need to hold math in our hands and see the mathematics with our eyes before we can hold math in our heads. Our brains are wired visually, but we have to teach ourselves digits. For example, babies and toddlers easily know which pile (or cookie) has more. Whereas, we have to be taught what digits are and what digits represent. When I see the digits 5 and 2, I should be seeing 5 things and 2 things and then understand that 5 is greater than 2. So we want to build upon the way that our brains are wired and give students experiences playing with math in their hands and seeing mathematics with their eyes.

For example:

• Ten-Frames: These are an essential tool in K-5. Our number system is base ten, so the whole idea is making groups of ten. We need to give students visuals that support making groups of tens.

  • • 10 ones = 1 ten

    • 100 ones = 10 tens = 1 hundred

    • 1,000 ones = 100 tens = 10 hundreds = 1 thousand

• Number Lines: Use in ALL grade levels of mathematics. Can be used for any operation, fractions, decimals, percents, and once students start graphing they are dealing with more than one number line.