My students love board games, and to be honest, so do I! I have a stockpile of games in my classroom to play before field trips or as a reward day! I especially love math-focused board games, since I feel like I’m sneaking in a little extra academics! Sometimes, I give my math students time in class to play math board games, and they are some of my favorite class memories! However, it can be hard to know which math board games are really worth the money. Here are my favorite board games to use in my math class!
1st Place: 4 Way Countdown
4 Way Countdown is the BEST math board game, hands down! I found mine at a thrift store my first year of teaching for $2.99, but don’t worry – there are newer versions on Amazon! To play, you roll two dice. You can either add, subtract, multiply, or divide the numbers to get a value between 1 and 10. With each turn, you can only put up one number, so you need to be strategic! 4 Way Countdown is a great way to get students to think through mixed math facts. Every year, my students love this game and ask to play it again and again!
2nd Place: Numli
Numli is a newer math board game that I’ve added to my collection. It is similar to the game Spot It – each card has exactly one thing in common with every other card. I truly don’t know how they do it! In Numli, each card has a combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems. Students have to solve the problems and find one problem from each card with matching answers. The person who finds the match first keeps both cards. Whoever has the most cards at the end of the game wins!
3rd Place: Target & Adsumudi
Target is an easy-to-learn game that can work for many levels! To play, a black number card is flipped – that’s the target. Using the white cards in your hand, you try to figure out how to get the number by adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing any of your cards. If you’re the first to figure it out, you keep the black card. The rules say that the first to 5 targets wins, but you could change that to be more, less, or whoever has the most after a certain amount of time.
Adsumudi is similar to Target in my opinion, so you may not need both in your collection if you’re just starting out! Each of the hexagonal cards has a target number in the middle and 5 numbers on the outside. Players add, subtract, multiply, or divide the numbers on the outside to get to the middle number. If you’re the first to do so correctly, you keep the card! Again, the first to 5 cards wins, but you can change that!
Honorable Mention: SMATH
SMATH is like a math version of Scrabble. Students use numbers, operations, and equal signs from their hand and on the board to create math equations, getting points each turn based on the difficulty. While my students enjoy some of the other games more, this one is definitely unique and fun – especially for scrabble lovers!
All of these games are available on Amazon! Do you have any of these games in your classroom? Let me know how you use them in the comments!
