Cool Math Games for Advanced Students

How to Design Math Games for Advanced Students

An advanced student is a child who excels at basically any educational topic. This child will most likely not feel adequately challenged by the material that is presented to him or her within the classroom. An advanced student may also continually bring home straight A's without working hard to earn these grades.

Interactive games are a great way to meet the educational needs of your advanced student. You will want to present your child with games that require him or her to apply what has been learned in school. For these students, simple repetitive practice will not suffice. Word problems or other creative activities will allow your child the opportunity to truly show what he or she is capable of.

Unknown Numbers

For this higher level activity, write number riddles on index cards and drop them in a bowl. On the back of each card, assign a point value to the riddle. For instance, the more difficult number riddles may be worth five points, while simpler riddles may only be worth one point. Depending on your child's ability level, you could write riddles like 7 x ? = 28. If your child is at the upper elementary level, you may want to include decimals or fractions in your riddles.

Have your child draw a card from the bowl and solve the number riddle. Keep track of the amount of points your child earns for correct answers. Ask your child to continue drawing cards from the bowl until each riddle has been solved.

What Am I?

Before beginning this activity, write clues that describe geometric shapes on a piece of poster paper. It will work best to write simple clues that are arranged in columns. For example, one column may describe a square. You could write clues such as 'I have four sides' or 'I have four corners'. Each clue should be covered with a post-it note or a taped piece of paper.

Have your child choose a column to begin working with and let him or her uncover one clue at a time. After reading a clue, ask your child to guess which geometric shape is being described. Challenge your student to correctly identify the shape by uncovering as few clues as possible. Have your child continue working through the columns until each of the shapes have been identified.