Math skills can only be improved with practice. Once you have spent time teaching a new math concept, the next step is reiteration. Many students become unmotivated when presented with page after page of math problems. Another, more entertaining option, is to use a math game.
There are many advantages to using math games instead of math worksheets. It saves paper, because you wont be printing out a bunch of worksheets every time you want to teach a new math concept. It saves money, because you can avoid purchasing some workbooks. Many online math games are free to play. The games are fun. If something is fun, it makes a student want to do it over and over again. The games take some of the drudgery out of practicing math concepts.
There is a website called Cool Math Games. It has several different interactive games, complete with visual and sound effects, that have been designed to practice specific math concepts and skills. Not everything on this website involves math, so you have to look around a little bit. Here are a few of the games that teach math, and are fun:
Feed Fribbit Addition
Fribbit is a green frog. At the top of the screen, an addition equation will appear. It may ask for the sum, or for one of the digits that equals the sum. There are many round, colorful, flies passing through the screen, each with a number written on them. To play, look for the fly that has the right answer on it, and click it. Fribbit will stick out his tongue, and eat the fly.
Feed Fribbit Subtraction
This works the same way as Feed Fribbit Addition, only is uses subtraction instead. It is just as fun as the addition version.
Crazy Math Taxi
This game is about practicing multiplication and division skills. You are the driver of a car. Ahead of you are three tracks. There will be other cars, that have numbers on them, (and some obstacles). At the start of the game, you will be asked to crash into cars that are multiples of 2. Use the space bar to jump over obstacles, and the arrow keys to crash into the cars that have the right answer. This is a timed game. If you make it to the end, an new game starts, with a different number that you must find the multiples of. It moves quickly, and is a game of “math destruction”.
Fraction Splat
This game requires you to recognize the difference between fractions, and mixed numbers. Several colorful disks will float around the screen. Each has a fraction, or a mixed number, printed on it. Click on the ones that are mixed numbers. When you think you have found them all, click the “finished” button. If there are more to find, the game lets you know. If you found them all, you get a new level, with even more disks to sort out.
Image by Jimmiehomeshoolmom