Back to School Math Activities

Choose the one that suits you the most and have a fun math lesson on your first day of school.

Naturally, you can make changes to adjust the activities to your students' level.

Throw and Calculate

• Have the children stand in a circle while you stand in the center of it holding a ball.
• Choose a child and give him a math exercise.
• Then, throw the ball up in the air. The child you chose earlier should catch the ball while in the air and then solve the exercise.
• If he solved it correctly, he will be the one to choose the next child and throw the ball.
• If however he is not successful, he returns to the circle and you choose the next player.

Math Bingo

• Prepare bingo cards in advance, but instead of numbers on the card, write multiplication, division, subtraction or addition exercises.
• Give each child a bingo card and some candies. Ask them to put a candy on each square. Choose an exercise and read it out loud for them.
• Now, the children must find the exercise in their card and solve it.
• The child who solved the problem correctly, can eat the candy which is in that square.
• The first to solve all the exercises in a row, column or diagonal is the winner.

Birthday Graph

• Give each child in your class a cardboard strip, and ask them to write their name and date of birth on it.
• When they finish, call all the children who were born in January, and ask them to arrange their strips on the bulletin board in chronological order.
• Then, call all the children who were born in February, and so on.
• When finished, you will receive a classroom birthday graph. Now, you could ask the children questions, such as:

Which month(s) has the most birthdays?

Which month(s) has the least birthdays?

Which month(s) has no birthdays at all?

How many students celebrate their birthday in January?

How many students celebrate their birthday in the summer?

Discover My Number

• Prepare cards in advance and write on each card a different number.
• Give each child one card. Ask them to look at the number that is written on the card and then to put it upside down on the table.
• In turns, every child should find out what is the number that is written on his friend's card. Each one has a total of ten questions, and is allowed to ask only yes-no questions such as:

Is the number greater than...?

Is the number even?

Is it odd?

Is the number between...and...?

Is it a two-digit number?