Here are some of our family’s current favorite games for practicing math skills with our daughter:
Push
Sort cards into a maximum of three piles without duplicating color or number, trying to bank the most points. Push your luck, and you might bust and miss out on taking a card stack and then have to roll the dice to discard! We sort cards into piles of ten to practice addition and counting by tens during end game scoring.
Roll for it!
Roll your dice to match the dice required by each card to earn the card for scoring, but watch out, because other players might want the card too! The first player to collect enough cards to reach 40 points wins. We use this game for dice and pattern matching, and addition.
Dragonwood
Collect adventurer cards in sets of matching colors, numbers, or in sequential order to earn dice to roll for capturing creatures in the forest. The six dice are numbered from 1-4, so practicing addition is fantastic in this game. Probability also factors in – how many dice do you need to try to roll a particular number? Our daughter sometimes needs help with this skill.
Check the Oven!
Collect various baked goods to equal a dozen each by requesting from players what you would like. (Go-Fish-style.) The game also involves bluffing, as all players must lay down cards on each turn. Get rid of the pie cards, because they cost points at the end of the game. This is a good game to introduce basic addition to 12 points. Melon Rind games has additional titles in this series for more complex math skills too!
Sleeping Queens
This was our daughter’s first card game, and it is still a favorite. Discard number cards or sets of matching number cards to draw from the draw pile, hoping to find king cards to wake the sleeping queens. Each queen has a point value – the first player to 5 queens or 50 points wins. Watch out for knights and sleeping potion! This is a perfect game to introduce number recognition and number matching to little gamers.
rat-a-tat Cat
Deal four cards facedown to each player, only peeking at the two cards on the ends. Draw a card each turn, hoping to replace the higher value cards with lower value cards, aiming for the lowest score. When you’re ready to score, call out “rat-a-tat-cat!” and each player takes their final turn. Memory and basic addition of cards numbered 1-9 are practiced with this game. It’s one of our family’s favorites, and we play five rounds per game then score.
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