Groups of four students play a quick game of trivia. Choose age-appropriate educational categories such as literature, geography or science. Create questions that take some thought to answer. To speed up the game so that more kids can play, use five rounds of questions. During each round ask a trivia question. Children who know the answer raise their hands. Call on the first hand raised. If that child gets the right answer, the child gets a point. The child with the most points at the end of the round wins a prize.
Fill a large jar with jelly beans. Ask children to use math skills when figuring out how many jelly beans are in the jar. Let each guesser study the jar. Advise him to count a small section of jelly beans that he can see and then multiply by an estimate of how many such sections there are in the jar. Supply pencils and paper for children to write out mathematical equations needed to make an educated guess on the number of jelly beans that are in the jar. Announce the winner at the end of the evening. The winner receives the jar of jelly beans.
Set up 12 2-liter soda bottles in three rows of four. Write numbers between one and 12 on the caps of the soda bottles. Give the child three rings that fit around the neck of the bottle. The child must toss the rings onto the bottles' necks. Each time a ring lands around the neck of the bottle the child uses that number toward the sum. Choose three sums. To win, the child must toss rings around the necks of the bottles to add up to the stated sums. The larger the sum, the bigger the prize.
Help children practice memorization skills by playing the matching game. Use playing cards or other types of picture cards. Lay the cards facedown, in rows of 10 and columns of five. Use fewer cards with younger children. One ticket lets the child turn over six cards. Players who make a match win a prize. Add a twist by using pictures of the prizes as the cards. The player seeks the match to the wanted prize. Let younger children watch other players take their turns.