Games for 2nd Graders: Regrouping, Arrays and the Clock

Second grade is where arithmetic gets its first real procedure. Up to now a child could solve everything by thinking about the quantity. From here on there are steps, in an order, that must be executed correctly — and that is a different skill.

Regrouping is the year's headline. 63 − 28 fails for one of two reasons: the child does not know 13−8 instantly, or they know it but subtract the smaller digit from the larger out of habit and answer 45. The first is a fluency problem, the second is a place-value problem, and they need different fixes. Games on this page separate them: one drills the facts to speed, another shows the tens being broken open.

Arrays, not tables. Multiplication starts this year, and it starts as a rectangle: 4 rows of 6 is 24, and the same rectangle turned sideways is 6 rows of 4. A child who meets multiplication as a rectangle understands commutativity for free and can rebuild any forgotten fact.

Time and money get harder than they look. Time to five minutes needs skip counting by fives around a circle. Money needs counting on from the largest coin, mixing units.

Word problems. The real skill is deciding which operation the sentence is asking for. "How many more" is subtraction; "in all" is addition; "each" is usually multiplication. Second graders need this named explicitly.

Also useful: 2nd grade math games, games for 3rd graders, games for 1st graders, reading a clock and counting coins.