Maths Games for Kids at Home: Build Number Sense Without Worksheets

Do maths games really work better than worksheets?

Think about one turn of a simple dice game. Your child rolls, adds two numbers, says the total aloud, decides where to put a counter and then watches you do the same, checking your sum because they want to catch you out. In fifteen minutes that can be forty or fifty small calculations. A worksheet offers the calculations without the reason to care, and it arrives looking like a test.

There is decent evidence behind the instinct. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), an independent charity in England that reviews education research, says in the overview of its guidance report Improving Mathematics in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 that board games such as Snakes and Ladders are particularly beneficial to developing understanding of numbers.

One study often cited in this area was published in the journal Child Development in 2008 by Geetha Ramani and Robert Siegler. Young children from low-income homes who played a simple numbered board game for about an hour in total improved in counting, recognising numerals, comparing the size of numbers and placing numbers on a line, and the gains were still present nine weeks later. Children who played the same game with colours in place of numbers did not improve.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, in its 2018 clinical report The Power of Play, describes play with parents and peers as a chance to build thinking, language and self-control, and notes research linking play with early maths skills. None of this means games replace teaching. School introduces the ideas. Games give those ideas hundreds of friendly repetitions.

How often should we play, and for how long?

Short and regular wins. In our workshops at Bodhih Training we see the same thing with adult learners: twenty focused minutes that people enjoy does more than an hour they resent. For a child aged five to eleven, aim for about twenty minutes, two or three times a week, at a time when nobody is hungry or worn out.

A shape that works in most homes has five parts.

• Set up (2 minutes): board out, counters ready, phones in another room.
• Warm-up game (4 minutes): something easy, to start with a win.
• Main game (8 minutes): the just-right one, where they are mostly correct and still have to think.
• Child's pick (4 minutes): they choose, even if it is the same game as last week.
• Notice (2 minutes): one curious question, then pack away together.

Which maths games suit which age?

Ages are a guide, not a rule. What matters is the skill your child is working on right now. Use the table to find a starting point, then watch the first three turns. Instant answers and fidgeting mean the game is too easy. Guessing or stalling means it is too hard. Change the game straight away, without comment.

What are five maths games I can play tonight with dice and paper?

You don't need to buy anything. These five need two dice (or a dice app), paper, a pencil and some buttons or dried beans.

A printed board makes these quicker to set up and nicer to look at, which is the idea behind our Maths Game Night kit of 25 printable games, but a hand-drawn grid works perfectly well to begin with.

• Shut the box on paper (number bonds): write 1 to 9 in a row. Roll two dice, add them, and cross out any numbers that make that total. Keep rolling until you can't. Your score is the sum of what is left. Lowest wins.
• Four in a row (addition): draw a 6 by 6 grid and fill it with the numbers 2 to 12, with more 6s, 7s and 8s than 2s and 12s. Take turns to roll two dice, add, and cover one matching number. Four in a line wins.
• Biggest number (place value): each player draws three boxes for hundreds, tens and ones, and one bin. Roll a dice four times, writing each roll in a box as you go. No moving it afterwards. Biggest number wins.
• Array kingdoms (multiplication): on squared paper, take turns to roll two dice and draw a rectangle that many squares wide and tall. Write the multiplication inside. When nobody can fit a rectangle, the player with the most squares wins.
• Last one wins (logic): lay out 15 buttons. Take turns to remove 1, 2 or 3. Whoever takes the last button wins. After five games, ask whether there is a number they would love to leave you with.

How do I teach times tables through games, not drills?

Times tables are learned in three layers: understanding, then strategies, then recall. A child who can chant the seven times table but freezes on 7 times 8 has the song without the facts.

Start with arrays. Three rows of five squares is 3 times 5. Turn the paper and it is 5 times 3, the same fifteen squares. That one picture shows a child that half the multiplication square is a mirror of the other half. Then cross out the 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s and 11s, which most children pick up quickly. What remains is a much smaller job than "all the tables".

Next, play strategy games in which looking up a fact is allowed. In a product four-in-a-row game the child keeps a multiplication square on the table and checks it whenever they like. Looking up 6 times 7 twenty times, because you want to block your dad, is how it sticks.

Be careful with timers. Jo Boaler, a professor of mathematics education at Stanford, argues in her paper Fluency Without Fear that timed tests can be where maths anxiety begins for some children, and that facts are better learned through activities that use numbers in different ways. If your child enjoys beating their own best score, fine. If a timer makes them freeze, drop it. Sorting fact cards into "know it" and "not yet" piles does the same job.

What should I say when my child says "I'm bad at maths"?

Most of us reach for reassurance: "No you're not, you're so clever", or "I was terrible at maths too". Both are kind and neither helps. The first tells the child their feeling is wrong. The second suggests it runs in the family.

Your own feelings matter here. A University of Chicago study led by Erin Maloney, published in Psychological Science in 2015, followed 438 first- and second-grade children and their parents. Children of maths-anxious parents learned less maths over the school year and became more anxious about it themselves, but only when those parents frequently helped with maths homework. A game is a safer place to meet your child than a page of sums, because the game sets the questions and neither of you has to perform.

In the moment, try four steps.

• Hear it: "That one felt really hard."
• Add "yet": "You haven't cracked remainders yet."
• Shrink the step: switch to the easier version, bring out counters, or take the next turn together.
• Win one, then stop: end on a turn that went well, so tomorrow starts from there.

How do I play maths games with children of different ages?

Mixed ages are the most common reason families give up, and they are fixable. The trick is to build the handicap into the rules before the game starts, so it never feels like a rescue.

The simplest method is same board, different operation. On a race track the five-year-old rolls one dice and moves that many squares. The seven-year-old rolls two and chooses whether to add or subtract them. The ten-year-old may multiply, but multiplied moves go backwards. Everyone takes the same length of turn and everyone has to think.

Other options: give the younger player a head start, team a small child with an adult, or make the oldest child the banker or referee. Checking other people's answers is harder than playing. Logic games such as Nim also level the field, because luck and fresh eyes beat age more often than you would expect. Harvard's Center on the Developing Child suggests games as age-appropriate practice for executive function skills such as taking turns, holding rules in mind and changing strategy, which is exactly what a mixed-age game demands.

How do I know the games are working?

Don't test. Watch. Over a few weeks you are looking for small shifts in how your child plays.

Keep a one-line note after each session: the game, and what you saw. Once a month, look back for three things: a skill that has had no play, a game that is still too hard after three tries, and a game that has become easy and is ready for a harder version. If you are a teacher or tutor reflecting on your own questioning, the Lesson Design and Questioning Technique Assessment on AssessAll is one way to benchmark it, and Jobulary's explainer on the 70-20-10 model is a useful reminder of why learning by doing carries so much weight.

If you have a persistent worry, for example a child who is still counting every item one by one long after classmates have stopped, or who becomes very distressed around numbers, talk to their teacher. This article is educational, not a diagnosis.

• They say the sum aloud without being reminded.
• They stop counting every dot on the dice.
• They check your arithmetic and enjoy catching a mistake.
• They choose a move for a reason and can explain it.
• They ask to play again.