Three Board Games that Help Your Kids with Math

When it comes to my daughters, one thing that is very important to me is their education. This is why my wife and I always take the time to help our oldest daughter with her homework. It is also the reason why I spend a great deal of time helping them improve their math and reading skills whenever possible.

This is especially true of my oldest daughter. Even though she's one of the best students in her second grade class when it comes to math, she does have a few areas (mostly with adding and subtracting in her head) that she still struggles with.

After learning about this during her last parent teacher conference, I decided to spend extra time with her each week. But, since I know she gets burned out easily when it comes to things like flash cards, I decided to find a much more fun way to help her, using board games.

Here are three games I believe are fantastic for teaching her math:

Monopoly - This one is a bit obvious but it is also my favorite. When we play this, my daughter has to add, she has to subtract (to make change) and, on some occasions, she even needs to do something she isn't even doing in school yet, multiply. And, as an added bonus, the game helps teach her the value of not spending all her money at once.

Scrabble - Yes, Scrabble is a word game. But, in addition to helping her with her spelling and her vocabulary, my daughter also has to add and even multiply to figure out her score. One thing I've noticed about her since we started playing this game on a regular basis is she is starting to add the letter values in her head first, so she knows which words are more valuable. That's something I'm sure helps her when she's in class.

Gin - OK, technically this isn't a board game. It's a card game. But, it is just as effective as the other two games because, after every hand, she has to add up her cards and either add or subtract her total to her overall score. At first, I started out by just having the non-face cards worth 1 point and the face cards worth 10. But I eventually changed it so each card had a different value (based on the number on the card) and, with practice, she was able to do that too. And, she gets faster every time we play.

If you have a child that needs help with math and don't already own one or more of these games, I recommend making a trip to the store. It's a small investment that will pay huge dividends.