Author
Mhairi Sim
Published
July 2025
Key takeaways
Year 3 is a pivotal time for our little learners as they transition to the Key Stage 2 curriculum. Here, they will begin to build on the foundations they developed in Year 1 and Year 2, and explore more complicated aspects of these mathematical concepts.
This can be overwhelming for kids, so it’s important to help them relax into these new ideas. Engaging, and more importantly, fun activities offer kids a learning opportunity that doesn’t feel so scary and instead allows them to feel excited and curious about their learning!
Be it in the classroom or at home, having some fun Year 3 maths activities up your sleeve can help to keep your kiddos motivated and engaged while reinforcing key learning objectives this year.
Let’s take a look at some fun and educational Year 3 maths activities that you can use in school or at home to support your learners!
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Maths is a tricky subject for some, but hands-on, game-based learning is a real winner. Here is our list of tried-and-tested Year 2 maths activities that teach and reinforce key maths concepts, broken down by skill!
Kids learn best when they’re having fun – it’s a scientific fact! Studies have found that gamified learning increases learners’ motivation and ability to take in and retain information! This is where hands-on and game-based learning activities come in. Here are some creative ways to make Year 3 maths exciting for your kiddos:
1. Peas in a pod (addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication)
Using small cards or PostIt notes, create matching pairs with maths equations and answers on corresponding cards. Shuffle the cards and give one to each learner. The goal is for them to move around the room and try to find the person who has the card that corresponds to theirs!
2. Maths bingo (number)
There are lots of ways to play maths bingo! Create or print ready-made bingo cards with numerical answers (e.g. 15, 52, 30) and read out questions that target whichever subject you’d like. For example;
3. Food fractions
Using paper plates and pens, or coloured cards, scissors and glue, have your kids create some pizzas with all their favourite toppings. In groups, have your kiddos cut their pizzas up into different fractions – have some create halves, quarters, thirds, sixths, and so on. Then, let your students compare their fractions and see what they notice about which ones are equivalent.
4. Maths charades
Create cards with some maths vocabulary or problems on them (e.g. ‘triangle’, ‘multiples of 3’, ‘right angle’, ‘the number 6’). Players act out or describe the term on their card without saying the exact phrase, while the other children guess! This game is a great way to encourage problem-solving and communication skills while revising some maths concepts!
5. Times table card flip
Using a standard deck of cards, children will take turns to flip two cards over and multiply the two numbers. Be warned, this can get quite competitive as a team game, but it is a super fun way to practice the tricky times tables that our kiddos will tackle this year!
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Putting maths into practice in real-world contexts and having kids physically get involved with their learning are ideal ways to make maths more engaging. Here are some exciting ideas for both indoor and outdoor maths activities:
Place problems or maths questions around the classroom or your home and set your learners on a hunt for some treasure! For every correct answer they give, they’ll get another clue that’ll lead them to the next clue. You can do this activity for any maths topic – I particularly love this activity as an end-of-term maths revision activity to consolidate the past few weeks’ learning.
In recent years, a wealth of resources has become accessible online, including downloadable, printable activities and digital resources. Here are some examples you can use with Year 3 learners at school or home:
Each of the activities we’ve suggested in this article supports learning for Year 3 maths, aiming to help get learners off to a great start in the KS2 curriculum.
Activities like ‘Maths Bingo’ and ‘Times Table Card Flip’ build learners’ fluency in the four operations (addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication) and help them to improve their recall of multiplication facts.
Taking learning outside with activities like measuring perimeter and ‘Shape Hunt’ not only makes these activities more engaging and fun, but also provides a real-world context for these skills.
Creative tasks like ‘Food Fractions’ allow learners to physically explore complex concepts like fractions and equivalence, while ‘Maths Charades’ and scavenger hunts develop problem-solving and communication skills.
Activities like the ones we’ve suggested allow children to be active, be creative, and get hands-on with their learning both at home and in the classroom. By combining structured learning and opportunities for fun and play, we are allowing maths to be both enjoyable and accessible for our little ones, helping them to develop a lasting enthusiasm for the subject.
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