The grocery store game brings home the practical uses of math to children and parents alike, and includes every member of the family in the activity. Parents set up a room in the house as a shop, and stack different grocery items around the room, along with the prices. The family nominates a cashier and the rest of the family shops with a bag of money (small change is easier for small children to handle), choosing their favorite items from the "grocery store shelves." The cashier adds the purchases and gives change from her own collection of small change.
Math Jeopardy is a fast-paced and competitive math game for families with more than one child in school. Split the family into two teams of equal ability and set up two blackboards or whiteboards, one for each team. A parent (game-show host) finds math problems from a textbook and splits the problems into categories according to difficulty. She then assigns points to them; for example, the easiest problems are worth three points and the hardest problems are worth 10 points. Each team takes turns picking a category and both teams nominate one person to solve the problem. The teams can shout suggestions (but not step-by-step instructions) to their member. The first competing team member to solve the problem wins the points for his team.
When students learn about measurements in class, an interesting way to put this into practice is to set up a practical measurement test. If parents are willing to be measured, the students can use a measuring tape to see how tall the parent is, how long his arms are, how long his fingers are, how big his head circumference is, and so on. It is probably wise to steer clear of waist, hip and chest measurements. Kids can place their parent's results into a table. Students who know how to figure out averages, or how to create a graph, can use these results to pinpoint how tall, for example, their parent is compared to their siblings or visiting friends.
For a chocolatey ending to a math night, kids and parents can face off against each other in a one-on-one candy-counting competition. A family member (the game host) prepares a bowl of small identical candies, weighing scale and two plastic food bags. The parent and child first get to judge how heavy one candy is and test their idea of weight by weighing 10 candies (dividing by 10 to find the weight of one candy). Then the game host secretly counts out a specified amount of candies into the food bags. Each player has to figure out how many candies are in the bag and how much they weigh. The winner is the first to answer correctly. The game can be made harder for the adults by giving them a lot more candies than the kids.