Five Outdoor Math Games For Kids
God and math—both are complex but orderly and reasonable. Patterns in nature and numerical relationships point to this attribute. This summer, help your child keep their math skills sharp with five fun outdoor games.
- 2-D shape water drawing. Get an old paintbrush and a cup for water. Ask your child to paint a triangle, square, and other shapes, then watch them evaporate. To up the rigor, ask them to describe how many sides and vertices each shape has. This activity works best on a hot day.
- Skip Counting Hopscotch. Use sidewalk chalk to draw a regular hopscotch board. As early elementary students hop the squares, have them skip count by 2s, 5s, or 10s. Older ones can add skip count by 3s, 4s, 6s, 7s, 8s, and 9s. Mastery of this skill helps kids with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
- Target Addition/ Comparing Numbers. Draw a target with sidewalk chalk. Put age appropriate numbers into each ring. (For example, younger children have 0-10, older ones have double digit numbers.) Kids throw three stones onto the target and add up the numbers they land on. Do five rounds. Then order the scores from least to greatest.
- Clocks. Use sidewalk chalk to draw an analog clock without hands. Brainstorm a list of fun activities. Assign each a time. For younger kids, make the time to the hour. For older ones, include five minute intervals. Your child stands in the center and uses her hands to show the time of her three favorite activities.
- Number Line Addition and Subtraction. Use sidewalk chalk to draw a number line and a target. Label both with age appropriate numbers. Players start at the beginning of the line. With a squirt gun, kids shoot at the target. Whatever spot they hit, they advance (add) that amount on the number line. Each time they move, they must shoot the target from their new spot. If they miss, they go back (subtract) one interval. Whoever is furthest along the number line after 5 shots wins the game!
After you enjoy a game, remind your child about God’s great wisdom. Romans 11:33 NASV says, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!”
Which game sounds like the most fun to try? Do you have another good one to add (pun intended)–maybe even one for language arts? Please tell me in the comments!
Lori Z. Scott
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
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What great suggestions! Kids will get to have a lot of fun while reinforcing important math skills. As a homeschool mom of six (four of them are now adults and the other two are older teens), I always worried that we would lose ground in math during the summer, but this would’ve been the perfect solution! 🙂
Yay! I’m glad you found them helpful.
Wow! You have shared wonderful ideas for fun-filled playful ways to reinforce math skills. I love them.
Thinking of other possibilities, you might use measuring cups, spoons and water to fill pint, quart, or even gallon size containers. Concepts could include both equivalencies as well as fractions.
How many gallons of water does it take to fill a wading pool? Maybe some kids would have the patience to try this. Or, on a different level, fill a wading pool to the top. Then let one child carefully get in, lie down, and get back out. Then see how many gallons of water it would take to replace what spilled out when he got in.
I really like that idea. That is a concept that can be difficult for kids to grasp, and your hands-on approach sounds perfect!
Fun ideas! As a kindergarten teacher I taught measuring while playing a free-form bocce ball game all over the playground. The kids used fabric measuring apes to see who’s ball was closest to the pallino (small ball). The added bonus was lots of exercise for everyone.
I love your idea. That’s another concept that can pose challenges for kids.
These are all such fun ideas, Lori! With our grandkids, we draw a game board on the patio with chalk. They are the pieces that move around the board we use giant dice to roll to see how far they move. They all want to land on the square where they get a snack. It’s good for simple counting skills. And we put fun stuff to do in the squares where they land.
I absolutely LOVE that idea. You’re so much fun!