According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), young children learn best through play and play, is in fact, their work. Playing math games at home is educational and when the home environment is open and accepting, math games can be fun games. The home environment actually holds unlimited opportunities for fun educational math games. Daily routines and activities that are mundane are gold for use as kids games. When boring activities become fun games, they become less difficult to get kids to partake in such as during meal preparation, doing laundry, dressing, and routine hygiene times.
Educational Math Games or Kid Games: Mealtime
Meal and snack times often go unnoticed as great opportunities to plan fun educational math games for kids. A little thought, will provide one with many different kinds of fun educational math games to play while eating. Game boards or specific math materials are not needed to play fun education math games. Think about this...around the table and in the kitchen there are a plethora of materials that can be counted; added to and subtracted from; compared in size and shape and as the same or different. Math games can be made out of all the resources in the room. Math games might be about whom can count the most floor tiles, can find the most things that are a specific color or who can find the most things that can be eaten and not eaten. A fun educational math game that can be played while fixing, eating and cleaning up after mealtime might be a game like...who can think of the most math games we can play tonight?
Educational Math Games or Kid Games: Free-Play Time
All households have times of the day when kids are allowed to choose what they want to play. In a school environment, this time is called free-play time. The idea is to teach children how to naturally choose to use free-play time to play educationally fun math games. A little up-front teaching sets the stage for ongoing awareness of ways to play that teach math concepts and skills. Some ways to do this up-front teaching is to help them set up math games with different kinds of toys like: blocks, tricycles, beads, pretend clothing and props, etc. A couple of pre-set math ideas are about setting up contests like: who can build the tallest block tower, who can ride their bike the farthest, who can sort all of the toys into colors, sizes, shapes. Once kids know how to construct play in this fun educational math game manner, they will continue to use these skills and reinforce their own learning.
Educational Math Games of Kid Games: Summary
Every household has an unlimited potential for playing fun educational math games. All it takes is a little thinking and planning to turn your daily routines and activities into opportunities to teach kids math concepts and skills via fun educational math games.
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Published by Mary Starr Johnson-Gerard, Ph.D.
I am a Ph.D. Educational Psychologist with over 35 years of experience in the fields of human development, behavior, and learning. I have hands on experiences as well consultative experiences in all areas. I... View profile
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