24 fun maths games for kids
Charlotte Thomas
Social EditorMake home maths lessons fun with these games designed to improve your child's maths skills. From addition to multiplication, subtraction to division, they cover all the skills needed for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 and are suitable for ages four to nine.
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Lockdown has turned most of us into homeschoolers, but thinking of ways to make learning fun can be tricky. Particularly if it's been a while since you did a sum without the aid of Google.
Luckily there are plenty of maths resources out there to help. So get ready to battle monsters, launch rockets and do karate with cats, all in the name of maths!
Whether you're looking for free online maths games or numerical board games the whole family can enjoy, these fun resources will boost your kids' maths skills – and you might even learn something, too.
From addition, division, subtraction, and times tables to recognising money and shapes, every age and maths ability is covered, as well as all the important Key Stage 1 (KS1) and Key Stage 2 (KS2) skills.
We've ordered these maths games for primary school kids by age – 4-5, 6-7 and 8-9 – but if you've got a maths whizz on your hands, they may want to try some of the trickier games. Games aimed at younger children can also be useful for reinforcing skills older children may struggle with.
Ready? 1, 2, 3 … let's go.
Maths games for 4-5 year olds
Perfect for younger children, these games help kids recognise shapes and coins, practise basic counting and simple sums.
1. Match the Shapes
Ideal for younger children who are learning to identify shapes.
Match the Shapes asks kids to find the hidden shapes in a colourful picture. It's surprisingly satisfying, we've had a few goes ourselves.
2. Bug Catcher
Popular kids' character Curious George is trying to catch bugs and helping kids learn to count along the way.
Perfect for playing on a tablet, kids have to guess whether there are more red or yellow bugs. Then they can help George catch them to find out how many there really are.
3. Great Jelly Caper
This CBeebies game is great for kids who are honing their counting skills. Help Super NumTum find exactly 10 cubes of jelly to save the day!
4. Bottle Take Away
In year 1, kids learn about 'more' and 'less'. This fun game helps them practise adding and subtracting using green bottles hanging on the wall. The best bit is you get to let them smash to the floor.
Sing '10 green bottles' as you play to make it even more fun.
5. Sum Swamp
Sum Swamp is an award-winning addition and subtraction game designed for children aged 5+. Play as a family and move your cute swamp-themed counters around the board by answering sums using the numbers 0-6. You can get it at Amazon for £13.00.
6. NumBugz Games
Suitable for ages 4+, NumBugz contains 13 maths-based games, payed with hexagonal tiles that come in a handy portable bag. (Good for long journeys and taking on holiday at a later date.)
Endorsed by National Numeracy, try the easiest game Sortz with younger children and work up to Colonyz (a bit like Scrabble with numbers) as their maths skills progress. Find it at Amazon for £17.49.
7. Toy Shop Money Game
Help younger children learn to identify coins by buying toys from the online toyshop (don't worry, they can't really buy anything!). You can choose the difficulty level by picking to play with single or mixed coins and setting a limit on the value.
8. Bobbie Bear
This interactive game helps kids with problem solving. They need to work out how many different outfits they can make for Bobbie Bear using four items of clothing. For older children, you can increase the number of clothes so they have more options to play with.
Maths games for 6-7 year olds
With slightly trickier sums and game play, these games are ideal for 6-7 year olds.
1. Roll the Dice
In this online game kids roll a virtual dice and do sums based on the score. You can choose to add, multiply or subtract numbers. Slightly younger children may enjoy this game, too.
2. Caterpillar Ordering
Suitable for ages 5-11, you can pick an appropriate level for your child's ability in this online maths game. Kids have to put numbers in the right order to build the caterpillar's body and can practise sequencing and recognising number patterns, too.
3. Karate Cats Maths
Aiyah! Designed for KS1 children, Karate Cats Maths is brilliant fun from the team at BBC Bitesize. Covering topics including fractions, shapes, addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, kids get to choose a character and answer questions to earn bronze, silver and gold cups.
4. Snowboard Slalom
Guide the snowboarder along a slalom course and when a maths question comes up, direct him towards the right answer. This fun game covers topics including fractions, multiplication, adding, subtracting, rounding numbers and percentages.
There are levels for different year groups from 1-6, although kids under the age of six may struggle to control the snowboarder – even on the slow setting he's pretty fast!
5. Telling the Time
Practise telling the time on digital and analogue clocks with help from a bear in a top hat (naturally) in this interactive game.
6. Counting Cars
Drive a car around a car park and smash into the car that represents the number you're looking for. This is a great way to get kids counting forwards and backwards in their heads. You can choose numbers up to 1,000, too, to help them count past 100.
7. Magic Maths
This wizard-themed board game is suitable for KS1 kids (age 5-7). When they solve the sums, they'll add yucky ingredients like brains and bogies to their spell ingredients. Rubbing the magic heat-sensitive patch to see if they've got the answer right is pretty cool, too. You can find it at Amazon for £11.75.
8. Triominos
Get the whole family involved with this classic game for ages 6+. Using triangular dominos kids will need to think logically and work out strategies to suceed. You can find Triominos at Amazon for £12.49.
9. Blast Off
Designed to help children work with two-digit numbers, Blast Off has different levels of difficulty making it suitable for ages 5-8. Practise counting backwards and forwards and finding a number that falls between other numbers. Sample questions include, 'What is seven more than 31?'
Maths games for 8-9 year olds
Fractions, multiplication and division … these games put the fun into KS2 maths skills.
1. Cupcake Fractions
This printable game helps kids work out fractions. Cut out the cupcake cards and see if you can calculate the amount you need to take to your market stall using fractions. If you want to make this game even more fun, how about baking some real cupcakes or sweet treats to use?
2. Hit the Button
Older kids will love testing themselves against the clock with this interactive maths quiz. Choose to focus on one of six different topics including times tables, number bonds, square numbers and halves. Kids have to answer as many questions as they can in a minute. But can they beat their score next time?
3. Guardians: Defenders of Mathematica
In this cool game from BBC Bitesize, kids get to choose their character and then defeat monsters in an ancient kingdom by answering questions on 10 different maths topics. Designed for KS2, adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying has never been so much fun!
4. KS2 Maths Invaders
In this quick-fire game, avoid enemy fire and attack spaceships by answering maths questions correctly. Suitable for KS2, older kids will find the doubling up, rounding up, fractions and timetables rounds particularly helpful.
5. Tables Tennis
This is a two-player game that helps kids practise their times tables. With a tablet between them, kids can choose which times table they want to use and hit balls by answering questions correctly. Want to make it more competitive? Turn that speed up!
6. Times Tables Heroes
Suitable for KS2 children, this fun board game lets you practise multiplication using the times tables from 2-12. Perfect for preparing for the new multiplication tables check, which is compulsory in year 4 from June 2020. You can find Times Tables Heroes at Amazon for £10.09.
7. Tommy's Trek Times Tables
In this platform game, kids move Tommy the tiger through different worlds answering multiplication questions as they go.
Looking for more ways to boost your child's brainpower at home? See our other great resources or chat with parents in the forum below.
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This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small amount of money if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our articles and reviews are written independently by the Netmums editorial team.
