Using fruit and other healthy snacks can help your child to learn math while feasting on tasty and nutritious treats. Give your child a baggie of fruit or vegetable slices and tell him that he can eat one piece every time he has done a math problem correctly. Show him an example of two carrots plus two carrots equals four carrots. Let him test out his addition and subtraction skills using the snacks. For ages that have advanced beyond single digits, try using a smaller fruits like pomegranate seeds or blueberries.
There are many different money games that you can use to teach your child math. Collect a handful of coins, putting most of them in your pocket with a few enclosed in your hand (a nickel and two pennies to start). Tell your child you have three coins in your hand and they are worth 7 cents and ask him which coins he thinks you may you have. Now try it with more coins and different money amounts. You can also teach probability with coins by having a contest to see who can get a coin to flip a certain way a number of times. Take out a sheet of paper and have you and your child flip a coin 50 times. You can add a coin and have one person get points for two tails and two heads and have the other get one point for one of each.
This popular math puzzle game has swept the nation and you can find it in many newspapers. Try working on a Sudoku puzzle and ask your child to help you. Explain that they can only use each digit once in each box and on each line. If your child tries to bend the rules, gently coax him into understanding how to make it work. Many children love to do the things that their parents are doing and by showing your child how you enjoy playing Sudoku, you may be able to help him to enjoy the math puzzle game as well.
If you have two children playing together, you can use the spirit of competition to fuel their math fun. Tell them that you are going to have a contest to see who can get the most addition problems right in a row. Roll a pair of dice for one of the contestants and tell them to add the two dice together. When he gets one wrong you can switch to the other contestant. Try out this game with subtraction and multiplication. You can add as many dice as you want to the game. They can also go for speed instead of accuracy, seeing who can answer 10 questions correctly in the fastest time.