Math Game Project Ideas

Math game projects encourage students to work together and come up with fun math games the whole class can enjoy. Projects should contain a good amount of work for an effective project so students can face some challenges along the way. You never know—your student may design the next popular board game.

A math board game provides a great way to incorporate math, board design and game rules. Board games incorporate an endless variety of themes and subjects, so let a student decide this, then have it approved by the teacher. Let's say a student likes punk music and wants to create a math board game around it. She could create a band and design the board with different venues, tour stops, etc. The game could center on how much money a band makes at a certain venue and what a band has to spend on food, hotels, travel, etc.

A card game project can mimic any common card game or have an original theme relating to math. A challenging and fun card game can match equations to answers. If a student creates a card game about algebra, for example, 20 cards could have equations and 20 cards could have answers. When a student flips a card over and sees "2x + 3 = 7," he has to mentally solve for X and flip cards to find the answer. Students can play this game alone, in pairs or in teams.

The whole class could play Math Jeopardy. It can mimic or loosely follow the TV game show, in which case students can add more categories and questions to just have one round of questions. Some categories could include "Equations," "Math History," "X =," "Calculate This," "Mental Mayhem" and "Which Do I Solve First?" Students can designate points for every question; the team with the most points at the end of the game wins if they correctly figure out how many more points they have than the opposing team.

Math wheel loosely follows the game show "Wheel of Fortune." For this project, a student can create a wheel with a finger spinner. Spaces with various points on the wheel as well as a "Skip a Turn" and "Deduct All Points" keep the game interesting. A player has to fill in the blanks by figuring out the equation and its answer. For example, if the category is "Multiplication," and the board displays " x = ​" a student chooses a number between 1 through 9. If a player requests a 6, the puzzle would look like "​ x = _ 6" Eventually, the answer becomes 8 x 7 = 56. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.