Math can be difficult and even frightening at times for many students. If you’re a parent or teacher, phrases like “I hate math” or “I just don’t get these fractions”, are unfortunately, far too common! But then again, this is the real world of math teaching and math learning!
A great way to help your child develop their math skills is by adding a little fun to the equation. Using tangible ways to demonstrate skills such as fractions, as well as providing entertaining opportunities for practice and application, is half the battle!
Making Your Own Math Games is Easy
I’ll share with you several fraction math games to make, that are a lot of fun and cost little or nothing out of your pocket! Keep in mind that you can create similar games for learning all kinds of math skills! All that’s required are some helpful manipulatives to create or buy such as fractional circles, bars, squares or number lines. Also, the Internet has many great sites where you can obtain fractional and other math templates to use for free.
One great thing about these games is that you and your students are probably already familiar with the original versions of the games. This makes your job a lot easier because learning how to play the game is not a big deal, since most players have seen or played the original game. This way, kids can get into the game quicker and start building fraction skills even faster!
Concentration Games
In order to make an easy Concentration type game, you create sets of fraction word cards and their corresponding picture cards. Students lay out the sets of cards face down. Then, they take turns choosing two cards to try to find matches. If a match is found, they keep their matched cards and their turn continues. If not, they turn the cards back over and the next player continues by searching for matches. For instance a player would have a match if they turned over the fractional words two-thirds and a picture that showed two-thirds shaded on a card. The winner is the person who has the greatest number of cards.