You have worked hard all year and your scholar has made tremendous progress on math facts. Don’t let your summer break undo all progress that has been made. Try a few math games!
Bingo
Make a bingo card with a grid of 25 answers for you and your mathematicians to play. Instead of calling B-4 you call out 4+3. If the answer you have called is on the bingo board, the player may cover their answer space. Be sure you have a master list of the math problems you have called out. You, as a caller, should play too! The first person to cover their answers wins. At first you can play that one line of correct answers wins. (across, down, diagonal) As your student gains confidence make it a Cover All. You can make coins be your counters and you can use this as a money counting lesson as well. For example: “I see you have 5 nickels on your bingo card. How much money is that?” This game can be done for all operations: multiplication; division; subtraction; and addition.
War Playing Card game
2 or more person game
Determine whether you will make the game addition, subtraction, or multiplication before beginning. Deal the entire deck of cards. Each player turns over the top card from their pile without looking at it. The person with the higher number needs to answer the problem correctly in order to win the hand. For example if two people are playing one person turns over a 7 and the other person turns over a 9. The person with the number 9 is the one who gets to answer. If they answer incorrectly, the other person has a chance to “steal” the cards. You tell your children that you will make mistakes. (Give more incorrect answers than correct answers if they are just learning facts.) If there is a draw (you both turn over the same number on the card) you must “go to war” against each other. You then each place 3 cards face down and one card face up- the person with the highest number then must answer the problem. Aces are valued as 1, while all the face cards (jack, queen, king) are valued as 10. The person with the most cards wins.Warning! This is like Chutes and Ladders- it never ends! You can set a certain number of rounds to play if you are short on time. My kids always loved “catching me” making mistakes so they could steal my hand. It really keeps your child involved in the game and reviewing facts with each hand.
Concentration
Make up 10-20 pairs of math fact cards and place them face down in random order in rows of 5’s. (One card would have 7+6 and the other card would match it with the answer of 13) Choose two cards to turn over. Only turn one card over at a time to see if you can match them. If they do not match then they are turned back over and the next person takes their turn. The person with the most pairs wins. Be sure if you are playing that you make mistakes so they can “catch” you. If they do catch you or you catch them and they are wrong- you get to take the matching pair. Be sure to have the player say the problem and the answer out loud each time two cards are turned over. The person with the most pairs at the end of the game wins.
Matching
Make a pattern and write out math facts with the answers on the card. Cut the card apart and have your scholar match them. For example- make a set of 20 hearts. Write 10-3= 7 and then cut the heart in half. Mix up the hearts with various subtraction problems and have your child match the hearts correctly.
Share a Little Debbie heart cake or make heart-shaped sugar cookies afterwards for a job well done. You can even make eating the cookies a math problem. There are 3 people and each will get 2 cookies, how many is that? Or, you can just eat them- yum, yum!
Schoolmarm Ohio 
Thanks for addressing this!
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You are welcome! I will do another post soon with some resources I am now gathering for this topic.
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Here is another game idea for a child to do math facts and some logic mixed in. Make index cards or sticky notes with numbers on them. These will be math facts, so you may write 4, 5, 20 on 3 seperate cards. (no symbols) Make at least 5 math facts up, more after your child gets used to this. I make a “bank area” where I put all these sticky notes (I post mine all over one wall, in crazy, random order) I ask them to make math facts using those sticky notes. They should be 4 [space] 5 [space] 20 along the wall or on the table. I ask them to make a list of sorts, with the math facts lined up, so all the equal signs would be in the same place, if we had any. I MAY tell them what type of facts I am looking for (subtraction, addition, etc) or, I may not. Depends on how much thinking I want them to do. Do not help them figure it out. If you have more than one child, use different color sticky notes to denote which child gets which numbers. For my younger child, I usually help them get the first math fact done, so the rest will more easily fall into place. My daughter loves logic/puzzles/mysteries, so this doesn’t necessarily feel like “learning” or “school”
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Thanks, Amy. I love this game idea for math. I think it is terrific how you can take easily found office supplies and make them into a quick and fun learning or review idea.
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