Fun and Free Math Activities for Elementary Students

How to Help Your Child Improve Addition Skills

Addition is a foundational skill that your child will be required to perform throughout his or her school career. In lower elementary grades, your child will be expected to compose and decompose numbers based on tens and ones. He or she will also need to fluently add whole numbers within 20. For upper elementary grades, your child must add within one thousand and work with decimals. Games that will help your child fine tune his or her addition skills are explained below.

Lower Elementary (K-2)

Fact Family Art

Have your child work on fact family sentences in an artistic way! First, ask your child to draw a tree. The fact family numbers will be incorporated into the drawing by adding items to the tree. For instance, at the top of the tree, your child could write the number ten. Under it, your child could write the numbers six and four on leaves. This drawing demonstrates that your child understands that 6 + 4 = 10.

Addition Stories

For this activity, you will need empty jars and popsicle sticks. Label each jar with a number. Create addition stories and have your child model the story using the sticks and jars. For instance, tell your child three people move into house number one (represented by jar number one). Later, two more people move into house number one. How many people now live in house number one?

Afterward, ask your child to model the addition stories in a numerical sentence. In this case, it would be 3 + 2 = 5.

Upper Elementary (3-5)

Matching

Write a variety of numbers on index cards and turn them face down. Use approximately 30 cards for this game. Players should take turns randomly choosing two cards to add together. If the player adds the two numbers correctly, then he or she takes ownership of the cards. If the sum is incorrect, the cards are returned to play. The player with the most cards at the end of the game wins!

Addition War

You can be ready to play this addition game by taking a deck of cards and removing all face cards. Using the remaining cards, make one stack in the middle of the table. Players should take turns drawing two cards from the top of the deck and adding them together. The player with the largest sum wins all cards for that round of play. For more advanced children, you can adjust the game by adding three numbers together.