Maths games for children: counting, comparing and calculating in your head

Games complement practice, but they do not replace teaching. In one study, preschool children from low-income families played a simple number board game for about an hour. Afterwards, they were better at counting, comparing and recognising numbers, and still were nine weeks later. The same game with colours instead of numbers brought no improvement. An analysis of 18 studies on such number board games found a small effect overall. So if you want your child to practise numbers specifically, choose games in which numbers really feature.

Children aged 4 to 6 already play with lengths and quantities. Being able to recite the numbers up to ten does not yet mean being able to count. In a study with two- to four-year-olds, many answered “How many?” with the last number they had counted, without having understood how counting works. Between the ages of six and eight, children learn to place numbers up to 100 evenly on a number line. In this selection, Fruit Punch and Rat-a-Tat Cat are recommended from age 6.

Quite a lot. Anyone who calculates in their head holds intermediate results in working memory, such as the values of the face-down cards in Rat-a-Tat Cat. In Fruit Punch, inhibition comes in too: holding back your hand when there are four or six fruits. In one study, working memory, inhibition and cognitive flexibility were each independently linked to children's maths performance. These are correlations: they do not prove that a game will improve a child's maths results.

Games are practice, not targeted support. In the Swiss study mentioned above, children who started out weaker tended to gain more with a structured training programme than without one. Children who started out stronger, on the other hand, tended to gain more with the games than with the training. If difficulties persist, talk to your child's teachers. At home, games with an element of luck or cooperative games in which nobody loses alone are a good choice. And let your child count on instead of starting again at one: in one study, five- and six-year-olds learned more from a number board game that way.