January 16th, 2010

Year 3 Fun Math Games

Whenever you are browsing on the internet looking for some fun, you can always choose to play a free online game. These games are very diversified and there will be a game for every person, no matter his tastes and preferences. Most of the games are quite silly and also very funny, but you can also find some more serious games. For example there are many educational games, that can be very useful especially for the kids. From these online games they can learn the numbers, the alphabet, learn the names of different objects, and can even learn math. There are also many puzzle games, and they are usually for the adults stimulating their intelligence and creativity. But today we are going to focus on some educational games for the kids, and we’ll talk about some year 3 fun math games.

Here is a site that offers many educational games, and some on the math domain too. http://teachingtreasures.com.au In the online interactive mental math games you will find some games for all the primary school years, from year 1 to year 8. As we said we are going to discuss about the games for year 3. Well these are not actually real games, and they just require to make math operations. For year three you will find operations such as addition, subtraction and times. There are three different pages, and each one has 10 different math operations. All you have to do is make those operations (mentally or on a piece of paper), and then write the correct answer into the blank box. But before starting the game, remember to start the timer. You will have 5 minutes to complete all the operations, but if you complete them faster, just press the “check answers” button. You will first see your time, and then you will see exactly which operation you made is good and which is not. If you written a wrong answer, to not waist any time in deleting each number, simply press the “clear work” button to delete all the answers. So have fun with this game, and if you think these calculations are too easy for you, then move on to other years.

Now let’s take a game that is really a game, and we’ll choose the one called “add em up”. When starting the game you will have a board with numbers, and you will see the next tile and the queue of numbers to come. You will have to place your next tile on the board so that all surrounding tiles add up to that value. For example if in your box you have a 1, a 3 and a 2 the value you will have to add is 6 (because 1 + 3 + 2 = 6). If making this move, all the tiles from that box will be removed. The goal of the game is to clear all of the tiles from the board, in the allotted time. The tiles will only contain numbers from 1 to 9. So when the numbers from a box ad to a number bigger than 10, for example 18, in this case only the last digit counts. For example if you have a 9, a 7 and a 2 their sum is 18. But the 8 is the only digit that counts, so you will need to place a 8 to make the tiles to disappear. If you get stuck, feel free to use your power moves. These are: a bomb to pick a spot and eliminate all surrounding tiles, a question mark to randomly change all remaining tiles on the board, a X to select a number and eliminate all instances of that tile from the board, an arrow that will undo the last move you made and a square with an arrow that will get a fresh queue with new random tiles to place. There are 4 game modes to choose from and these are: classic mode, puzzle mode, panic mode and practice mode, each with its specific tasks. So after all this is quite a fun game, that will stimulate your math skills and can be played both by kids and by adults.

Another fun game, that combines math with driving, is the Coolmath’s Crazy taxi m-12 game. In this one you will have to use the arrow keys to drive the car, and the spacebar to jump over obstacles. But this is not all…you will also need some math knowledge, because in each track you will have to crash into some cars and also avoid others. Each car will have a number written on it, and you will get instructions before starting each race. For example you will be asked to crash into the cars with numbers that are multiples of 2, and avoid the other cars. The multiple of 2 are 2, 4, 6, 8 and so on. In other levels you will get other instructions such as hit into the multiples of 10 (10, 20, 30, 50 and so on) or into the multiples of 7 (7, 14, 21, 28 etc.). Sometimes there will be more than one car fitting to your task in front of you, so try to move quickly and destroy all of them. If you will hit into a car that does not fit with your task, then your car will be blocked and you won’t be able to move forward…unless you move to the left or right of that car. So there won’t be anything wrong happening with you if you hit a wrong car, but you will lose time with all the stopping and starting again. You will drive quite a nice car, jump over obstacles and also practice your math skills so after all this is a fun game. Enjoy it!

So here were just a few of the many fun math games that you can find over the internet. Just search for them, and you will find many. And of course, if you want some that are really good, please share them with us. Good luck!