Board Games That Help Improve Math Skills: Spatial Relationship Gift Ideas

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We don’t have to be sitting in a math classroom to improve our students’ number sense and math skills! There are tons of board games that help improve math skills. These games can give your students math skills a big BOOST while your kids don’t even realize they are learning. The games in the list below are all focused on the topic of spatial relationships.

Games for Developing Spatial Relationships

Spatial relationships in math refers to your students’ mental workspace. Having strong spatial relationships is directly related to your student’s number sense and ability to do mental math.

Can your students mentally picture quantities?
Can they manipulate numbers and objects in their mind?
Can they picture what is happening in a story?
Can your child visualize what happens when shapes move in space?

Each of the games listed below will support your students in improving their spatial relationship skills, and they won’t even know they are learning.

The 60 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle is ideal for asking students to visualize orientation and how pieces need to be moved to fit together.
Brick Like This Lego Game is another game that asks students to be able to mentally manipulate and orient pieces. Using hands-on tools like Lego bricks now will make this skill easier for your students down the line.
Farkle and Shut the Box are both dice games. Dice games are excellent practice at subitizing! Whether your students are just quickly recognizing the dot patterns on a single dice or are using “conceptual subitizing” to combine dice and quickly recognize the total these games help your students to become quicker and more accurate mathematicians!
Gravity Maze is an exercise in spatial relationships. How can you move the ball from one place to another? What will happen if you add in a block that bends or turns the ball? Games like this ask students to exercise their mental workspace.
Labyrinth Pokemon Board Game is so much fun and one of my son’s favorites. You slide tiles along the board to try to build pathways to catch your Pokémon. Even as an adult, this game is fun and challenging. It is another game that simply builds your mental capacity to visualize and manipulate pieces. This game also comes in other themes like Mario or a traditional non-themed version.
Otrio is another one of those games that is just as fun and playable for adults as it is for kids. Think of this game as mega tic, tac, toe. Rather than just trying to get three in a row you are now attending to size, color and placement. It is a really fun and competitive game!
The Wooden Maze game is as simple as it looks. Students slowly spin dials in order to tilt the board side to side as well as forward and backward in order to progress the ball along the maze. This is another game that will improve overall visual manipulation skills.
Now we are getting into some of my personal favorites! Ideal for upper elementary students through adults, Alpina is an absolutely beautiful game. This game is simple to learn but difficult to master and if you love strategy this is the game for you! You choose cards that will potentially give you points (2 points for every bird in this row) and place those cards on a grid. As cards are played you need to attend to the placement of the cards that you are playing as well as the placement of your opponents cards to ensure that you will come out with the most points.
Carcassonne is another game ideal for upper elementary students through adults. My husband beats me almost every time we play this game because his spatial skills far surpass my own! Even as an adult this is a skill I am working to improve. In Carcassonne you draw a tile each turn and place it to create a map. The tiles you place will help you to build roads, farms and cities which can each earn you points. Place your tiles well and you can create enormous cities full of points. This game is easy to learn and play but highly strategic and fun for the whole family.