Keeping students engaged and on task during the winter season can be tricky to accomplish. With so many distractions and exciting things taking place, learning academic content can be the last thing students want to do. These winter math activities for elementary students are a sure-fire way for students to get the practice they need AND have fun at the same time.
Winter Math Activities for Elementary Students:
Kindergarten Winter Math Games
Keep scrolling to see all the games in action and how to play each one!
Build a Winter Scene Game
In this first game, each time students answer a task card, they get to add an animal to their “winter scene” or take an item off another player’s mat. You never know who’s going to win based on this twist. All task cards include practicing recognizing geometry shapes and answering questions about their qualities.
Depending on which grade level students are in, the skill varies. There are 2 versions included: color and black and white. The color version is great for printing in vibrant colors. The black and white version is ink-friendly.
Winter Error Analysis Game
In this second winter math game, students look at each card and decide if the kid’s math answer is right or wrong. Then, students put a thumbs up or thumbs down next to each one to show their thinking. An answer key is included. The picture above shows area and perimeter for grade 3 but each grade level practices a different skill.
This is a perfect review activity before giving an assessment or as an extra practice supplement. You receive step-by-step directions so you know exactly what to do. Lesson plans for a sub aren’t needed when you have an easy-to-implement review game.
Multi-Player Winter Game
In this third game, each time a student answers a card correctly, the student then chooses a circle card randomly. The circle card tells whether to go forward or backward. The first person to make it to the finish line wins! Answer key included. Task cards practice a specific skill that is appropriate to your grade level.
Winter Multi-Player Gameboard
The fourth game is called Fill It Up! It’s so fun to play with mini-erasers or bingo chips! Each player starts in a separate corner of the gameboard. The first player rolls a dice. Whatever number they get, they move forward and get to fill up that many spaces. The next player rolls. They may overtake another player. Here, green is overtaking red. You can see between Step 3 and 4 that since green landed on top of red, green got to bump red off the gameboard. Play continues with all 4 players taking turns and trying to fill up as much space as possible. When time is up, OR when all spaces have been taken, whoever has the most space filled in wins!
The game is great for spiral review and is easy to set up and implement. This gameboard can be used for elementary children as a worksheet alternative, printables, in math stations, center rotations, math centers, as enrichment or remediation, in small groups, as test prep, as worksheets, homework practice (send it home as a fun way to practice!), printables, and so much more! The math activity is flexible so you can use it however you’d like in your classroom.
Winter Math Puzzles
Puzzles are always a class favorite for my students! Incorporating these winter math activities for elementary students into math centers is very easy and a great collaborative activity. Students use their math fact knowledge to put together each puzzle. Each grade level comes with a variety of puzzles that practice different math skills students will spiral review throughout the year. There are certainly plenty of puzzles for students to complete included in each math game pack.
Whole Class Winter Game
In addition to the games we’ve gone over, these winter math activities for elementary students are perfect for math fact fluency! In this fun winter game, students get to build a GIANT SNOWMAN! Students will get extra practice with their addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division facts while completing a fun team-building game at the same time. Students in kinder practice identifying numbers through counting pictures and ten frames. It’s the perfect way for students to get math fact practice while collaborating during the winter season. And most importantly, students are learning!
This is a great team game the whole class can play together! The teacher lays the snowman body in strips across the floor. Each team racing gets their own large snowman body. The goal of the game is to finish solving all of the equations on your snowman before the other teams. Students are given a bag of equations and walk up/down the snowman body to find where to glue each card. The first team to use all of their cards up first wins! VERY detailed instructions on how to set up and play are included inside the resource.
Digital Hide and Seek: Editable Winter Math Activities for Elementary
Next, we have a game that is SUPER easy to play! Have you ever wanted a FUN activity that is 100% editable and can be customized to any age level / any standard you are teaching? Do you need winter math activities for elementary students that you can use with the whole class OR just a few students? Something that can be used over and over again without becoming boring? Look no further! Every student I’ve ever encountered has LOVED the concept of hide-and-seek. Students find the hidden object by guessing answers to questions on the screen in this digital hide and seek game. Winter-themed slides are just right for any holiday celebration in the classroom!
Open Powerpoint to play Hide and Seek. Drag the object on the left behind any picture on the screen so it is “hiding”. The teacher adds in the object on each page so all 10 objects are hidden. Put the game in “Slide Show” mode to play!
Have students “seek” where the object is by calling on students to say answers to the questions on the screen. Click to see if their guess is right.
Then, when students click each picture, it’ll magically disappear to see if the student has “found” the object!
Whichever student finds the hidden object gets to come to the front of the room and call on students to guess on the next slide! Therefore, student engagement is high and students always want to come up next. Or, use the blank version to create whatever skill practice you’d like—math facts, letter recognition, spelling words…the sky is the limit!
To conclude, I hope you enjoyed learning about these winter math activities for elementary students and found some new ideas for your own classroom.
Click the picture below to find these math games for your grade level (available for Kindergarten to 5th Grade).
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