The Best Math Games for Your Kindergartener

Last week, I shared the best math games that you can play with your pre-schooler. This week, let's take a look at kindergarten games!

Shut the Box

As your child begins to venture into single-digit addition, they'll need lots of time to practice. Games like Shut the Box provide a wonderful way for kids to get familiar with their math facts while also thinking strategically and having fun.

To play, your child rolls a pair of dice and adds them together to find a sum. Then, they close the numbered tiles that add to that sum. So if your child rolls a 10, they could shut 9 and 1, or 7 and 3, or 1, 2, 3 and 4. Then they roll again and try to shut more! The goal is to completely shut the box. If you ever roll an amount and are unable to shut the matching tiles, you lose.

The game is extremely simple to learn, but not all that easy to win. You can play in rounds, or your child can play solitaire. They'll end up doing several different addition problems in their head, most of which they'll conjure themselves. But they'll be having so much fun they won't even notice how much they're learning.

If you're interested in seeing the game in action, I made a video about Shut the Box which you can check out here!

Click here to buy Shut the Box on Amazon (affiliate link)

Garbage

Kids love Garbage. This is a true statement, whether you are discussing the card game or actual, literal garbage. They can't get enough of it!

Garbage has been my most popular blog post by far since starting this newsletter. I think there are several reasons for this: Garbage is free, simple to learn, and it helps kids get very familiar with 

To play, you deal out ten cards face down in two rows of five. This setup evokes the ten-frame, which is an extremely common visual model for numbers in kindergarten. By drawing cards and trying to match them with the appropriate place, your child will start to build automaticity with the first ten numbers and their relationship to each other.

I think this game can be especially fun when played with the Tiny Polka Dot cards I mentioned last week! Honestly, I would have written up Tiny Polka Dot again if I didn't have this back-door way to remind you that yes, these cards are still fantastic for kindergartners and can be used to play all manner of games throughout elementary school.

Number Scavenger Hunt

I love this game because it travels extremely well. Here's how Number Scavenger Hunt works:

You get a sheet of paper and write down the numbers from 0 to 20. Then your child goes out and tries to find collections of objects that match each quantity. This is important: They are not looking for the numeral 13, but looking for thirteen of something.

They write down what they saw. When your kid fills out the entire sheet, they've won a prize! 

I learned about this game from Christopher Danielson (about whom you'll hear more later), who made it a handout activity at the Minnesota State Fair. It's perfect for fairs, vacations, museums, and any other situation where your child is walking around and seeing lots of groups of things. At the very least,  when they are walking around and letting their mind wander, it might wander in a mathematical direction...

Which One Doesn't Belong?

Kindergarten is about much more than counting and numbers! Your children will also begin to learn a ton about shapes and what makes them different. While this is a time for a lot of exposure to basic vocabulary, it's also a time to encourage your kids to notice things and try to describe them in their own words.

That's why I like the book Which One Doesn't Belong? This book is by Christopher Danielson, who also wrote How Many? book that I highlighted last week. This book is similarly structured: it has a series of thought-provoking images, each paired with a simple question: Which one doesn't belong?

Danielson believes, rightly in my view, that these open-ended questions lead to much more interesting and varied conversations over time. Kids start to use specific language to describe when something is curved or big or pointed, or round. Do these sound like math words? They should! Because your child is using them to classify shapes and distinguish their characteristics. Pointiness is an informal term, but a shapes pointiness is very closely related to the sort of angles it has. A shape's bigness is related to its area, and so on.

So buy the book and see if your kiddos can find a reason why every single shape in the book doesn't belong! It's more fun and more challenging than you might expect.

Click here to buy Which One Doesn’t Belong? on Amazon (affiliate link)

Pig

Of all the games I'm sharing, Pig is the most fun to play with a whole crew of kids. The game helps kids think about addition and probability, but it also gives them a visceral experience of letting their victory slip through their fingers, all based on the roll of a die.

Each kid gets a slip of paper to record their score. They start standing up to indicate they're ready to play. You roll a die and announce the total, and they add that number to their score. As long as they are standing, they get to keep adding to their score, but if they are still standing when you roll a 1, they lose all their points for that round. So after each die roll each kid has to make a choice: do I sit down and guarantee some points, or do I risk it all on the next die roll?

The game is most fun if you play four or five rounds and then see who has the highest point total over all five games. But you can play as long as you want! You'll never see a group of kids more obsessed with a die roll than midway through a round of Pig.