Effective Math Fact Games Students Love

Although I get tempted to do different activities and switch things up every week during our math warm-up and centers, I have learned to choose a few activities my students enjoy and know how to do consistently. That’s how they become successful at mastering their math skills. My goal is to spend less time giving them directions on how to do the activity and spend more time allowing them to practice. This, over time, led to creating math fact games my students love!

Why Math Fact Games?

Playing games helps students become independent learners throughout the year because they gain confidence in what they are doing. When students have more confidence, they get more excited about the attempt of learning, and instruction becomes more effective. Then I can spend more time working with my small groups and focusing less on management during independent work times.

The Secret Sauce to Math Fact Practice

Now on to the FUN stuff! Want a fun way for your students to practice their addition and subtraction math fluency? Make it into a math fact game! I found a teacher who had made word cards years ago and created a game played like Kaboom. My students loved it so much that I came up with the idea to do the same thing with math fact fluency cards. It might sound simple, but I took flashcards and added fun graphics (like unicorns, dinosaurs, and aliens) that have a few rules on how to play the game.

I switch them out based on the unit I’m teaching. By changing out the same math fact games with different pictures and switching things up a bit, my students get excited all over again about doing the activity. In fact, they ask to play again and again! This means they continue practicing the same skill but also know what to do when they see the math fluency games because of consistency.

And that’s the key with anything…consistency. We get better at what we do consistently.

To practice the same skill with other themes, students can play these games throughout the year to enjoy the game all year long:

• Unicorn Math Game
• Shark Math Game
• Farm Math Game
• Math Fluency Game Bundle #1 with 6 POPULAR MATH FLUENCY GAMES your students can play throughout the year

Teach them how to play the math fluency card game once and your students will have a fun and engaging way to practice their addition and subtraction facts throughout the year.

Here are some other posts about how to increase math fact fluency:

• The BEST Ways to Teach Math Fact Fluency in the Classroom
• How to Increase Math Fact Fluency
• 30+ Fun Fall Math Worksheets to Increase Basic Math Fluency Success