You and your students will catch "math fever" with these exciting ideas!
How about a math snack? Every child could be assigned a different day to bring a food and demonstrate how to use it for math. For example:
Can you think of three dimensional shapes you could eat?
Have children identify different three dimensional shapes, then guess what they could be eating for each one.
*Make sure children wash hands well before manipulating the food!
Cut a shower curtain in half to make a giant cell phone. (You could also use an old plastic table cloth.) Using a permanent marker, draw a large replica of a cell phone on the shower curtain. Put "+", "-", and "=" signs instead of the prompt keys. You could also make keys with the symbols for greater than and less than. Children take a fly swatter and swat out their phone number. They can also swat out math problems. Let them throw two beanbags and add up the numbers.
You will need two fly swatters of different colors for this game. Divide the class into two teams and give each a fly swatter. Write numerals on the board to correspond with answers to math facts you are working on. (For example, the numerals 0-10 for kindergarten; 0-20 for first grade; multiplication for third grade, etc.) One child from each team comes to the board holding the fly swatter. The teacher calls out a math problem or a number story. The first child to correctly "swat" the answer gets a point for their team. The fly swatters are passed to another child on each team and the game continues.
How many math activities can you do with a deck of cards? You can sort them, count them, put them in order. You can add them, subtract them, or make a pattern with them.
Pass out two cards to each child and ask them to make up a number story using the numerals on their cards.
Play "In Between." Deal out two cards to each child. They guess if their third card will be "in between."
"Topper" is similar to the old game of "War." Each child draws a card and turns it over. The "top" card wins, and the winner collects the cards. If the same number is drawn, then each player selects three more cards and turns up the final one. The highest one takes all.
Challenge children to make up their own games using a deck of cards.