Here is a fun math review game that’s great for any age and ability! This game can be personalized for any common core standard or skill. Best of all, you just need a piece of paper, a marker, and some rocks to set it up for your students at school or children at home.
I love this math review game for so many reasons. You can use it as a pre-assessment for a new unit of study, post-assessment at the end of a unit, boredom buster at home, or fun math review game! We are currently using this game to help prevent the dreaded summer slide. We put in a ton of hard work during virtual learning this past spring and we want to keep everything my boys’ learned fresh for fall! This game is easy to set up, fun, and will help children retain all those important math skills they learned during the school year.
Before we get started, I just want to mention that you can also use post it notes and stick them on the grid instead of writing the problems directly on the paper. This way, you could move the problems around or easily create and completely different grid for another day.
Ready to give it a try!? Here’s what you’ll need..
Supplies:
- Role of Paper
- Markers- I used sharpies and flip chart markers
- Rocks or Wood Cookies
- Post-It Notes
This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.
I made 2 versions of this game. One for my soon to be kindergartener and one for my soon to be second grader. I’ll start with the grid I created for my older child.
Here’s How to Make Your Math Review Game Board:
Step 1:
Make your grid. I traced around a chopping board with pencil to get a nice even rectangular shape.
Then I used a yard stick to make the rest of the grid lines. Once I created a template that I liked, I placed another piece of paper over it and traced another one for my younger child.
Keep in mind that your grid doesn’t need to be perfect and you can just freehand it!
Step 1:
Now fill in your grid with math problems that you worked on during the school year. Also, make sure you write the problems in a way that is familiar with your child! If you need some guidance with this step, I suggest looking at the first grade common core math skills (or whatever grade you are interested in) that were covered last year.
I wrote the answers on the rocks as I created the grid.
Step 3:
Move all the rocks outside the grid and invite your child to move the answer rocks to the correct space. You might need to review how to solve a few of the problems since your children might not have seen them in a while.
My son jumped right in and started the math review game right away!
He liked that this was a “huge worksheet” and thought the grid and rocks were fun to work with!
Right after I got my older son going on his math grid, I invited my younger son to try his activity. I set up a grid filled with colors, shape patterns, ten frames, counting sequences, easy addition, and subitizing dice pictures. You could also draw simple pictures for one-to-one correspondence or try simple number/shape/color matching.
He felt like he was doing “big kid work” because he was doing the same activity as his older brother.
I was happy to see he used familiar strategies to solve the problems like counting the dots on the dice and using his fingers to solve the easy addition problems.
This math review game was a huge hit with my boys and I’ll keep these grids out all week! Next time, I will use post-it notes to write the problems to I can use the grid for varying math skills. I think a literacy game would be fun too!
Pin it and save it for later!
I hope you give this math review game a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love this one.
∼Tara
