Fast-Paced Math Fun Kids Can Play Together

Children keep practising when a session is short, the feedback is instant, and there is a number to beat that is their own from yesterday rather than a classmate's. Sixty seconds is long enough for real retrieval practice and short enough that nobody negotiates about starting. What does not work is volume: a page of forty problems teaches a child that math is something to survive.

Mixed practice is harder than it looks, and usefully so. When every question is addition, a child can switch off and apply one procedure; when the operation changes each round, they have to read the problem first. That reading step is exactly what breaks down in word problems and on tests, so drilling it deliberately is worth the extra difficulty.