Games are a fun way to get your child thinking, communicating and reasoning like a mathematician. Here are five games for you to play together.
This classic board game can help your child build confidence with quantifying collections, learning how numbers work and developing spatial skills.
Players take turns to roll the dice to determine how many spaces they need to move. Landing on a snake will send you plunging down the board, whereas landing on a ladder will get you closer to the winning square.
If you don’t have a commercial copy of the game at home, you can make your own.
You and your child can play different games with this versatile set of colourful cards, aimed at children aged from 3 to 8 years. Playing Tiny Polka Dot can help build your child’s understanding of how numbers work, help them quantify collections, and develop reasoning and communicating skills.
This card game can be played with a standard deck of playing cards.
Go Fish helps your child explore how numbers work as well as developing their skills in quantifying collections and patterning. There's also some strategic thinking required so they can outwit their opponents! You can shake things up by tweaking the rules to explore other mathematical ideas.
This game is similar to Tic-Tac-Toe or Noughts and Crosses and will help your child practice their skills in quantifying collections, strategic thinking and position.
In Connect 4, two players compete to be the first to make a line of four coloured discs - either vertically, horizontally or diagonally. If you don’t have access to the game itself, you and your child can still play a version of it on paper.
UNO is a card game that develops your child's knowledge of quantifying collections, how numbers work and strategic thinking. It's played with a coloured deck of cards numbered one to ten, with additional special action cards.
The goal of the game is to run out of cards first, yelling UNO before anyone else when you have one card left in your hand. Coming in classic, junior and specialised formats, UNO is a game the whole family can enjoy!
