Of all the subjects that we’ve struggle with in our home education journey Maths was the worse. Maths was the one which for the first couples of years that was a slog. We learned through play and follow my child’s interest but Maths? It didn’t naturally come up in many of the subjects we studied or investigated. Then a friend suggested learning maths through play just as we did any other subject. I scoffed and pointed out at that at his age there wasn’t exactly many maths games out there. At this point she proceeded to list all the games which taught maths through play!

So over time we built up a collection. And by far our most popular and one which is grabbed quickly off the shelves was…..

Mastermind – The original code breaking simple game of guessing which pegs your opponent has chosen! Rather than random guess on behalf of the code breaker, probability comes into force at a GCSE level without much difficulty. Throw in some deductive reasoning, analysing of information and strategic thinking and you almost have a perfect educational game!

Monopoly – Who doesn’t have a copy of monopoly in their home? And yet the hidden skills to win of budgeting, money management and cause and effect are learnt without the need to refer to any text books.

Game of Fifteen – Very similar to noughts and crosses. But in 15 you have numbers 1-9 to play with, starting off with a 3×3 grid. You have to be the first player to make a straight line of three numbers equal to 15. This can be made more difficult with ages and experience by adding in algebra!

Card Games – While kids are to young to gamble with cards they are incredible for teaching maths skills. Games like “War” can reinforce quick addition and subtraction, while “Pyramid” helps with number bonds to 10. “Kaboom!” can be adapted for multiplication practice, and “Higher Lower” introduces probability. More advanced games like “Fraction War” and “Place Value Games” can also be created using a deck of cards. 

Sudoku – Bizarrely I use this to switch my brain of thoughts before bed. It’s a great way to introduce children to logic. As they get older and more experienced you can introduce them to more difficult Sudoku. This incorporates maths skill such as Combinatorics, Statistics, graph theory etc. All the while they’re playing quietly and growing their brain!

Tangrams – We love these. Tangrams are a dissection puzzle. A square is cut into seven geometric shapes: two large right triangles, one medium right triangle, two small right triangles, a square, and a parallelogram. The challenge is to rearrange these seven pieces to form a specific shape or figure, as depicted in a puzzle. They introduce or reinforce various mathematical concepts like geometry, congruence, similarity, and symmetry. My children were gifted these as a present. Even as teens they love to try and beat each other in speed at playing these. They are superb for having in your bag, the car or just lying around the house!

Online Games – Slowly but surely the word is realising that not all games online are bad for you. Online maths games such as Progidy are superb at teaching and reinforcing new maths skills. BBC Bitesize have some great games for all ages. Transum, well there’s a ton of games there to play! From simple up to difficult for all ages and the skills broken down to help you research if needed skills around the topic.

Outside games – from hop, skip and jump games, to learning how to use a ruler and steps to measure a tree the outside world is full of maths. Why not look up Fibonacci and see how many sequences you can find outdoors.

What’s your fun way to learn maths? Share below or come and join our Facebook group to share there!