The days of the abacus have long passed us by. Pencil and paper worksheets? Sure, that's still used, but with the wide availabilty of the internet and computers, there are now tons of great ways to learn math! Free and fun math games for your children or students to learn with are abound and this article will review several different free math game websites. 

Why You Should Use Online Math Games for Your Kids

Online math games are the perfect way to entertain your child online and educate them at the same time. Use online math games as rewards for homework or chores completion (your kids won't even know they're learning!), use them as fun study tools to entice the development of math skills or teachers can even incorporate them into lesson plans for the classroom. They're a wonderful free resource and they should definitely be taken advantage of.

How Are These Games Free Online?

Most sites either make all their revenues off of advertising and some sites are simply run by individuals who enjoy developing learning tools (some may even be teachers) and wanted to share their resources for free. There are some sites that require payment, but with all the quality free math games out there, why shell out money when you can access comparable games for free?

This site is a fantastic resource for educational math games for kids. They have high-quality flash games that can even be played on the Wii! How? If you have an internet connection on your Wii, simply go to here. You can actually play the games with your Wii-mote on your big screen TV. A lot of their flash games are multi-player and cover the four basics of mathematics - Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication & Division. Fraction & Ratio games are also included. With games such as Grand Prix, Jet Ski, & Alien Addition, there are plenty of games to entertain your kids or students for hours on end.

Coolmath-games.com is a fantastic resource for a wide array of math games. They have java games, flash games and html based games and of course, all are free. They have math games for every age, including a game that even I enjoy, called Coffee Shop. This game allows you to run your own coffee shop and see how much of a profit you can make. It is similar to the well-known Lemonade Stand game. Check out Cool Math Games here.

Sheppard Software is yet another fantastic free online math games website. This site boasts high-quality and very fun flash games to play. They boast the following categories (there is something for every student!) Check out these great free games here.

• Early Math (K- 2nd Grade)
  
• Basic Operations
  
• Mixed Operations
  
• Fractions
  
• Pre-Algebra
  
• Dollars & Cents
  
• Place Values