How Can I Help My Child with Math Skills?
Parents often ask me what they can be doing to support their child's learning, on the math front. What I have found is that one of the most effective ways to support your child’s math learning is by playing games together! Here are some key reasons why games are such a powerful tool for developing math skills:
Games Make Learning Fun and Engaging
When children play math-related games, they learn without feeling pressured. The
enjoyment they get from playing (and even winning!) opens the brain to new information, making the math concepts learned during play easier to remember and access later. Fun experiences trigger positive emotional responses, which help store memories in a more accessible way.
Games Reinforce Critical Thinking and Logic Skills
One of the true goals of math is to help students learn how to think critically and solve problems logically from start to finish. Many games encourage exactly this type of thinking, requiring players to analyze situations, make decisions, and strategize their moves. These cognitive skills are essential not just for math, but for approaching life’s challenges with a logical mindset.
Games Encourage Pattern Recognition
Recognizing patterns is a fundamental part of math, as it lays the groundwork for understanding numbers, sequences, and relationships. Many games challenge players to find or recognize patterns, whether through repeated actions, sequences, or visual elements. These activities help children build pattern recognition skills, which will support them in algebra, geometry, and beyond.
Games Provide a Real-World Context for Math Skills
Games often present math in practical, real-world scenarios, such as managing resources, calculating points, or planning moves. This hands-on learning approach helps the brain store math knowledge in areas related to where we use it in real life, making it easier to recall and apply when needed.
It's FUN!
As a parent, if you had to choose, would you rather sit down to play a game, or sit down to struggle through a worksheet with your child. It's a rare kid who is going to choose the worksheet!! Games are just FUN! The learning happens almost magically! It's also a great way to involve grandparents, aunts and uncles in the learning process, with your child!
By playing games, you’re not only helping your child strengthen their math skills but also showing them that math can be fun and relevant to everyday life! At TurningPoint math, we regularly implement much of our learning via games, due to our prevalent use of the RightStart Mathematics Curriculum. This curriculum leans heavily on game playing as a major instructional tool, and encourages games play on a nearly daily basis. Even if you are not using the entire curriculum, you can purchase just the game book, and related items needed to play the games, and use these as a way to supplement your current curriculum.
We also encourage the use of various table games that you can find on the general market. One game-producing company that is a favorite is Simply Fun. So many of their games are just very, well... fun! So much so that even grown-ups sincerely enjoy playing them! They are also often very unique, not just mimicking the popular games like Monopoly and Uno, but coming up with unique scenarios and methods of play. Several favorites are "Walk the Dog", "Kilter", and "Shore Seekers". (which happens to be a tutle-themed game, so extra bonus points for that from Turbo - our mascot!)
Moving past those two favorites, and into the general market... there are JUST so MANY!! I probably need to write a different blog post about that, some day, explaining what's great about each of these, and many others. But for now, let me just list my top ten. These are all games that our multi-generational family enjoys playing together, often. Clumsy Thief (and Clumsy Thief Junior) Adsumudi (the name alone, is just too cool!) Prime Club Sleeping Queens Set
Mobi Point Salad
Splendor (and Splendor Duel - the 2-person version)
Settlers of Catan This is of course, barely a drop in the bucket of what is out there, and of course there are old favorites that have obvious math-related themes, such as money exchange or even simple counting. The long and the short of it is, if you want to help your child strengthen their math skills, plan a weekly family game night! As a math tutor, working one-on-one with students every day, I can usually tell which students have families that play games together regularly! It's THAT helpful!
The fine print: I am an affiliate for RightStart Mathematics and Simply Fun, so following those particular links will create a little bit of extra income for me. Thank you!! Please know that this little bonus has NOTHING to do with why I recommend these resources, ever - I only recommend things that I LOVE!
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