4 Afterschool Games for 4th Grade Math Practice

When your child comes home after a long day at school, the last thing she wants to do is sit down with a math worksheet for practice. Even half days as a 4th grade student can be stressful. The intense concentration needed to learn is taxing for your child – let alone the idea of having to sit down immediately upon arriving home and doing mathematics. Instead, try these games for 4th grade math practice that you can do at home!

1. Positive and Negative Numbers Card Game

Grab a deck of cards and reinforce positive and negative numbers while having fun with your child. This activity does require an even number of players, so you can either play or sit out depending on how many kids you are working with.

Remove the face cards from the deck and shuffle the number cards. Tell your child that red cards are negative numbers and black cards are positive. Deal out the cards evenly between players.

Have everyone turn over their top card. The player with the highest number, accounting for positives and negatives, takes all of the cards and places them at the bottom of his or her stack. If two players have a matching value, they each take an equal number of cards. The player who gathers all of the cards or has the largest stack when time is up wins.

This game is fun and easy to do on the go. Think about carrying a deck of cards with you – especially if you are going to an amusement park – how long do you usually end up standing in line, waiting – trying to entertain your fourth grade student or your older kids. Having a deck of cards at the ready is an easy way to both entertain them and enhance addition and subtraction skills, or even use it as a tool in a word problem. But, you can also just play a game of War for some fun in between math practice. War is also a good way for younger students to begin to understand high/low numbers. Maybe you should bring two sets of cards.

2. Division Bingo

Much of 4th grade math practice involves practicing basic math facts. Division Bingo focuses on division facts.

Have your child write down 24 division problems on index cards. Solve the division problems, writing the answers on the back. Then, have each player create a bingo board by drawing a grid that is five squares by five squares. Mark the middle square as “free.”

Next, read the answers to the division problems and use them to have your child fill in the bingo boards randomly. Mix up the deck of cards. Draw a division problem and solve it. Players who have that answer should place a marker on that number. The first player to get five in a row is the winner. That’s much more stimulating than forcing extra 4th grade math worksheets on your child. 

The idea behind these games is fun and learning. You tend to retain items better if you are having fun and do not dread the practice.

3. Make a Dollar

Use playing cards for this competitive game (See? we told you that playing cards are an ideal math tool for you to keep within reach). First, assign the following values to the cards:

• Number cards 3-10 have that number of cents. (threes = $0.03, fours = $0.04, etc.)
• Twos and Queens = $0.20
• Jacks = $0.15
• Kings = $0.25
• Aces = $0.50

Write down these values (with the decimal point) so everyone can remember them. Shuffle the cards and deal five to each player, face down. Place the remaining cards in the center of the table, face down.

Players view their cards and add them up. If no one has $1, each takes a turn drawing a card from the center stack and discarding a card face up. The next player can either take the card that is showing or draw from the deck. Play continues until a player reaches $1 or the deck runs out. The player who reaches $1 or the closest to $1 is the winner. Depending on what motivates your 4th grader, you may consider offering a real dollar to the winner.

4. Tablet-Based Games

Let’s face it, you don’t always have time to sit and play a math game with your child after school. You can reinforce 4th grade math practice on a tablet with learning apps . Choose an app that is effective at teaching math concepts on a grade-appropriate level, and offers game-like play to keep kids interested. You can use parental features to track your child’s progress through the app. Be sure to check out both the quality of the reviews and the quantity. You want an app that lots of other parents have used for fourth grade math enhancement. A program, like Thinkster Math, that offers point-of-learning instruction will be quite effective as you give your child 4th grade math practice at home without boring him or her. And, your fourth grader it probably going to have some fun doing it. 

The hours after school are an excellent time to reinforce math skills. Keep them fun as you incorporate 4th grade math practice into your day-to-day activities, and you will see great rewards in your child’s academic performance.

And keeping sharp on skills like multiplication is always a good idea – not just single, but multi-digit multiplication is easily done – especially through apps like Thinkster. We don’t just give you a simple unit for your child to execute. Instead, we use research-backed activities that your fourth grader will enjoy as they learn. Our experts not only have the research on their side, but they also have years and years of experience teaching in real-world environments. They’ve seen every problem out there. They know how to reach your kids with both interesting and challenging exercises that reinforce what they are learning in school – whether that’s a game that enhances measurement skills or a smaller unit that concentrates on how to multiply. Yes, Thinkster is that flexible, and efficient. Better than a group-tutoring process where your child may be put into a group that doesn’t cover what your child in particular needs. Or, sometimes, in a group environment, your child may be too shy to ask the questions they need to ask.

Whether your 4th grade student needs basic practice to reinforce what they learned in school like the best way to solve multi step word problems or concepts like unit fractions, Thinkster is here for you.