Math and Business Resource Guide

Math and Business Resource Guide

You may not be quite ready to open your own business yet, but you can prepare for a career by building skills now. Understanding money and knowing how to save and spend wisely are important skills to have. Additionally, doing well in business requires good math skills. While you’ll learn about math and business in school, you might be surprised how much you can also learn by playing games.

Business Games

Understanding business involves a lot of different things. If you plan to own your own business someday, you will need to know how to keep track of the things you’re selling, setting prices and making sure that you have enough products. You will also need to know how to manage the team you hire to help run the business. Playing the following games online is a fun way to let you practice doing these sorts of things in addition to any coursework you may be completing:

  • What Are Profit and Loss? (PDF): Understanding profits and losses will help you see how businesses make sure that they make money from the products or services they sell.
  • Domino Effect : This lesson plan walks you through the steps of deciding on a price for Domino’s pizza.
  • What Did it Cost in 1903? Math skills can help you understand inflation, which is how the prices of products and services have gone up in the past 100 years.
  • Wage and Hour Facts (PDF): The U.S. Department of Labor oversees the laws about working conditions and wages in the United States.
  • Small Business Start-up Activity: Choose a project to make, then explore what it would take to create a business making and selling this item to customers.
  • Reality Check: Take this test to see if you understand what it’s like to be an adult and support yourself and your family.
  • Borrowing and Lending (PDF): Adults often borrow money to help them afford big purchases such as a house or a car. This lesson plan explains what’s involved with borrowing and lending.
  • Being Thrifty Is Nifty (PDF): This lesson plan teaches you all about budgeting and how to spend your money wisely.
  • Be Your Own Boss: Take this quiz to see if you would be good at running your own business.
  • You and Your Money (PDF): This guide teaches you all about making and managing money.
  • Design a Board Game (PDF): Use this booklet to learn how to design a board game you can use to improve your math skills.
  • What’s in the Books (PDF): Managing a company’s money includes keeping track of the money you make and the money you spend. This lesson plan teaches you how to manage a business’s books.
  • World of Cents: Play the World of Cents game to learn about the value of money.
  • How Coins Are Made: Learn how coins are made with this online activity.
  • A Chair for My Mother (PDF): This lesson plan shows you how a girl saves money to make an important purchase.
  • Business Ideas: If you think you might want to start your own business someday, explore business ideas with this activity.
  • Design Your Own Bill: Have fun designing your own dollar bill with this interactive game.
  • All About the Benjamins: Test your money IQ by reading up on facts and trivia about currency.
  • Allowance Basics: Your allowance is a great way to learn how to budget and spend your money wisely.
  • Money Responsibility: Learning how to be responsible with your money is an important skill to have as you get older.

Math Games

To run a business, you’ll have to know how to do math. Knowing how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide is the basis of mathematics. As you work with money, you’ll also need to understand fractions, decimals, and percentages. Playing the following games and doing puzzles are fun ways to get better at math.

  • Place Value Game: Use a deck of cards to learn about place values.
  • Island Chase Subtraction: Learn your subtraction facts while you play the Island Chase subtraction game.
  • Learn Mathematics (PDF): This publication suggests many different games and activities that can make you better at math.
  • Minus Game: Brush up on your subtraction skills by playing this game.
  • Spooky Sequences: The ghosts in this game have numbers on them, and you have to choose a number to put on one ghost to complete a number sequence.
  • Fraction Matcher: Match the pictures with the correct fractions to play this quiz game.
  • Hero Michael: Choose from addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division so Hero Michael can find the lost princess.
  • Acing Math (PDF): A deck of cards is great for practicing your math skills, and this workbook teaches you many different math games to play with cards.
  • Math Board Games (PDF): Print out these board games to play fun math games with your friends.
  • Dice and Card Games (PDF): Play card games such as Go Fish and Memory to improve your math skills.
  • Skill-Building Math Games and Activities (PDF): The game of Bingo or Around the World can be both fun and educational, helping you improve your math skills.
  • Math Academy: Are You Game? (PDF): In this activity, you work for a company that invents and sells games.
  • Money Math (PDF): When you understand money math, you can take care of your money, saving and spending it wisely.
  • Alien Addition: This game helps you learn your addition facts.
  • Family Math Games (PDF): These simple games will help you learn while you have fun with your family or friends.
  • Top 10 Outdoor Math Games (PDF): Take your math learning outside by playing Hopscotch or Math Racers.
  • Math Games (PDF): Games like Domino Derby or Going Fishing will teach you about numbers and basic math skills.
  • Math Games With a Pair of Dice (PDF): Play math games like the game of Pig with two dice and some scrap paper for keeping score.
  • Figure This Challenges: This website challenges you to use your math skills to figure out real-life math problems.
  • Moon Rocks: This game gives you math problems as you try to blast away moon rocks.
  • Online Business Degree