Playing with money is an excellent way to learn place value. Young children love to play store with a toy cash register and pretend money. You can upgrade this game to one that is appropriate for eighth-graders by enforcing some rules that will challenge them. They must use the fewest number of coins and bills possible to make change, and change must be correct. Have students count out the change aloud when they give it to the customer. The objects sold should be high ticket items, such as music players and calculators, so the students work with large numbers. Provide representations of these items, however, so nothing goes missing.
Students can study probability with a simple dice-rolling game. Pair up students and give each group two dice. Ask them to predict the outcome if the dice are rolled five times. Were they correct? Using what they know about probability and after doing some research, students should explain their findings and make new predictions for rolling the dice 10, 15 and 20 times.
This is a simple game students can make themselves. Each student takes 40 index cards and writes positive and negative integers from 1 to 20 on the cards. Pair up students and have them shuffle their cards and place them face down in front of them. Each partner turns over two cards and adds the numbers. The first student with the correct answer keeps all four cards, or you can play that the student with the highest number answer keeps all four cards. Play until one partner is out of cards.
If your school has a math or computer lab with Internet access, consider opening the lab to a couple of websites with appropriate online math games. Sites such as Math-Play and AAA Math offer a wide variety of math learning games that students can play individually or with others. Check out these and other sites to determine which offer the best games for your classroom.