After School Math Activities for Kindergartners

Enhance students' learning with after-school activities.

Kindergarten students who are struggling in math can enhance their math skills with after-school math activities. Similarly, children who love math and may be gifted learners can always benefit from extracurricular math enrichment. Both teachers and parents can offer kindergartners some fun, after-school math games and activities that will improve math skills and increase their love of logic learning.

Board Games, Dice and Cards

Simple board games that require counting or addition are great for kids in kindergarten. These games can be played after school in a childcare setting, or they can be played at home with parents and family. Games such as Candy Land (numbered board), Hungry Hungry Hippo (counting marbles) or "War" with cards will teach children how to count, add and compare numbers. Bingo is also an excellent game for kids to learn their numbers and letters.

Parents and teachers can make up their own math games using dice, coins or cards as well. For example, use a Sudoku-like square filled with numbers one through nine. Have kids roll a single die and place a coin on top of the number that they roll. The game ends when all the numbers are covered, or when they get three in a row horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

Activities With Money

Give kids a project in which they collect and keep track of pennies that they can eventually donate to a local charity, such as an animal shelter. Set a certain goal to try to reach, such as $20. Have children figure out how many pennies that would be by using rows of ten and counting by tens. Then have them collect as many pennies as possible from family and friends. Encourage them to do chores at home for pennies.

Children can count and record the number of pennies collected and keep a running total. Teachers or parents can help the children add total amounts. A volunteer parent can also help the children take the money to the animal shelter or other charity once the goal has been reached.

Blocks

Kindergarten students can use blocks to help them learn how to count. Simply building a structure will help children learn about the physics of keeping tall things from toppling over. But educators can also have children count the number of blocks in their buildings. They can add or take away blocks to learn simple addition, subtraction and counting backwards.

Blocks can also be used to measure things. Teachers or parents can have their children measure how many blocks long a table is, for instance. Using blocks can be a precursory lesson in measurement before students learn to use a ruler.

Combining Math and Art

Color by number is one of the easiest ways to combine math and art in an after-school math activity. Try putting simple additions of two numbers into the spaces to color instead of just a single number.

Number rolls are also a fun challenge for kindergartners. Provide sheets of paper with blank square spaces on them. Each sheet should have 10 blank spaces. Have children number the spaces from one to 10 and color them like a rainbow. Then have the kids fill in another sheet with the numbers 11 to 20. Attach the two sheets together to make a sheet that is twice the size. Children will have fun making their number sheets really long, and as they do so, they are learning to count even higher.