Which math games are worth it in second grade? Short answer: the ones that practice one skill at a time. The five I would practice at home are adding and subtracting within 100, place value up to 1000, telling time to the nearest five minutes, money, and odd and even numbers. A deck of cards covers the first two, a handful of real coins covers money, and a paper clock face covers time. And if the problem is one worksheet with red marks on it rather than a skill in general, that is what I would use our Power-Up Arcade for: you take a photo of the homework page and we make up to 15 practice questions that test the same thing with different numbers.
What second grade actually asks for
Reading the standards once saved me a lot of guessing, because they are blunt about what this year is for. The operations domain asks children to “Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies”, and then sets the real target: “By end of Grade 2, know from memory all sums of two one-digit numbers.” That is a bigger ask than getting the answer right, because the answer now has to arrive without the working.
The base ten standards are the ones I spend the most time on at home. Children are asked to “Fluently add and subtract within 100 using strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction”, to “Count within 1000; skip-count by 5s, 10s, and 100s”, and to understand “that the three digits of a three-digit number represent amounts of hundreds, tens, and ones”, with the standard's own example being that “706 equals 7 hundreds, 0 tens, and 6 ones.” My reading is that place value and adding within 100 belong together: a child who cannot see the tens has no way to add within 100 except by counting.
Then measurement and data carries the two that feel like life rather than like math. One asks children to “Tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m.” The other asks them to “Solve word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, using $ and ¢ symbols appropriately.” Geometry adds halves, thirds and fourths, and the operations domain finishes with odd and even numbers and small rectangular arrays, which is where multiplication starts being built without being named.
A ten-minute check that shows you which one is missing
I would do this before buying or downloading anything, because the answer usually changes what you pick. Four quick questions, asked while you are doing something else so it does not feel like a test. Listen for whether the answer arrives or gets built, which tells you more than whether it was right.
The four questions, and what a wobble sounds like
- Facts. “What is eight and seven?” A pause then an answer is fine. I treat fingers, whispering or counting up from eight as a sign the facts are not in memory yet, and that is the first thing I would spend the ten minutes on.
- Within a hundred. “What is thirty-four and twenty?” Listen for whether they add the tens. If they count on in ones instead, they are getting there the slow way, and that is the thing to work on rather than the answer.
- Place value. “How many tens are in a hundred and fifty?” In my experience hesitation here explains a lot of other trouble, and it is the cheapest of the four to work on.
- Time and money. Point at a clock and ask the time, then ask what two dimes and a nickel come to. In our house these two were the slowest to arrive, because we stopped using cash and every clock we own has digits on it.
Whichever one wobbled is the game you play tonight. The other three can wait a week.
Five games, one per skill
None of these need printing. What you need is a deck of cards, a jar of change, a sheet of paper and a handful of something small to count. Take the face cards out of the deck and let aces count as one.
Race to a hundred, for adding within 100
Each of you flips two cards and makes a two-digit number from them, choosing which digit goes where. Add it to your running total and say the whole sum out loud, in tens first: “forty-two and thirty, that is seventy-two.” First to pass a hundred wins, and going over means you say how far over. The reason I like it is the choosing. A child deciding whether to make a big number or a small one is thinking about place value for their own reasons rather than mine.
Three-digit showdown, for place value
Deal three cards each, face up. Both of you arrange yours into the biggest three-digit number you can, then say the two numbers in the longest words you have: “four hundreds, two tens and one one.” Bigger number takes the round. Once that gets easy, switch to playing for the smallest number, which is harder than it sounds and quietly teaches the same comparison the standard asks for with the greater-than and less-than symbols.
The coin jar, for money
Real coins, not pictures of coins. Put a jar of mixed change on the table, name a price, and ask your child to pay it. Then ask them to pay the same price a different way. Two dimes and a nickel, or five nickels. Seeing both of those work is what stops coins being a vocabulary test. Write the amounts down sometimes, because the standard wants the dollar and cent symbols used properly, and that part is easy to skip at the table.
Five past, ten past, for telling time
Draw a clock face on paper and cut two hands out of card. You call a time, they set it. Then swap, and let them call times for you, including one you get wrong on purpose. Stay on the five-minute marks, because that is what the year asks for, and say a.m. or p.m. every single time until it is automatic. Mine took weeks on this one and then got it in an afternoon, which I think is just how clocks go. If it needs more than a paper clock, telling time games for kids has the longer version.
Pairs and rectangles, for odd, even and the start of multiplication
Grab a handful of something small and ask your child to pair it all up. If nothing is left over, the number is even, and they can write it as two equal numbers added together. Then build the leftovers into rectangles: four rows of three buttons, and the question is how many without counting them one by one. Adding three four times to get there is exactly what the standards are after when they group this under “Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication.”
The worksheet that came home
Everything above practices what you chose. The page the teacher sent home is a different job, and in a real school week it is the one that matters most, because it is the exact thing your child got wrong on Tuesday. You can do this with a pen: take four or five questions off the page, change the numbers, and write them out again. It takes about as long as it sounds. Our Power-Up Arcade does the same thing from a photo of the page, making “up to 15 practice questions that test the same thing with different numbers” that you read and approve before your child plays them. I wrote the pen version out in full in turning tonight's homework into a game.
When a game is not the answer
A game is practice, and practice assumes the method landed. The thing I would check first is the facts within 20, because that is what the standard asks for from memory by the end of the year. To my mind a child adding within 100 while still counting up to find eight and seven is doing two hard things at once, and will look worse at place value than they really are. If that is what the check turned up, go back a rung before going on, and math games for 6 and 7 year olds is where I would start. Once those facts are back, math games for 3rd graders is the rung after this one.
Second grade is also early enough to notice a child starting to dread the subject, and I would take that seriously before I took the gap seriously. What we did was go back to sums they could already do and stay there until the dread went, which bought back more than pushing on would have. Trouble that has run all year is a conversation with the teacher, and signs of dyscalculia in children covers what to ask for if something feels more stubborn than practice. For a steadier weekly rhythm once things are moving, math practice games has the routine, and counting money games for kids goes deeper on the coin jar.
Frequently asked questions
What math should a 2nd grader know?
The standards ask second graders to “Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies” and say that “By end of Grade 2, know from memory all sums of two one-digit numbers.” On top of that they add and subtract within 100 using place value, “Count within 1000; skip-count by 5s, 10s, and 100s”, tell and write time to the nearest five minutes using a.m. and p.m., and solve word problems involving “dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.”
What are good math games for 2nd graders to play at home?
The ones aimed at a single named skill. Mine are the race to a hundred for adding, the three-digit showdown for place value, the coin jar for money, the paper clock for time, and pairing objects for odd and even. What you need for them is a deck of cards, a jar of change, a sheet of paper and a handful of something small to count.
How long should a second grader practice math for?
In our house it is ten minutes, most evenings, and we stop while it is still going well. What you are building this year is recall, and my experience is that recall responds to how often you come back rather than to how long you stay. A short session you can repeat tomorrow beats a long one that ends in a fight.
My second grader still counts on their fingers. Does that matter?
By the end of the year it does, because the standard asks for those sums from memory, and my experience is that a child who counts up every time runs out of room once the numbers get bigger. I would not make a drama of it. I would spend the ten minutes on the facts themselves rather than on bigger sums, and let the fingers fall away on their own.
Are online math games good for 2nd graders?
Some are. The test I use is whether my child gets asked a question and told straight away whether they were right. If that is happening, it counts as practice. If the math is decoration on a game that would run without it, I would rather have the ten minutes at the table.