Math Sprint -The Mental Math Game from Byron's Games Review

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

Are you ready to run the race to exercise your mental math skills? Byron's Games has a new board game for kids available and it involves math. Math Sprint-The Mental Math Game is a fun and innovative way to master those pesky math facts that need to be exercised to build those brain muscles.

Byron's Game’s games tugs at my heart as a mom with a child with disabilities that has had many hospital events throughout the years with my daughter. The “Bryon” in the name was created by a then 6-year-old Bryon who found himself in an extended stay in the hospital. Bryon loved geography and during the time he was in the hospital the 2016 Summer Olympics were happening he kept track of the medal count of the countries. The story doesn’t end there in December 2018 Bryon sent his Continent Race to 130 children hospitals. A portion of every purchase is donated to select children charities. He is still giving back with all their products-you see heart tug for an amazing young man!

Math Sprint -The Mental Math Game is for kids ages 7 and up. You can play as teams or with 2-8 players in a game.

Math Sprint - The Mental Math Game comes with:

Running Track Game Board

258 Cards

10 Dry Erase Cards

8 Runner Playing Pieces

1 Dry Erase Marker with Eraser

Instruction Sheet

All the game pieces included in the game are made extremely well.

The game object is answering questions using your mental math skills to get to the finish line! Your game pieces will make their way around the track while answering math equations from addition, subtraction, multiplication,division, and there are word problems too. You can choose one set of math equations or mix them up if you like.

There are 258 colorful cards and have 2 math problems on each card. You can choose which math you want to play from addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. The cards are color-coded too. Double-digit addition and subtraction is an orange color, simple addition, and subtraction lime green, multiplication and division are blue. Answers to the math problems are in the corner of each card. 10 Blank Dry Erase Cards for you to write out your math problem that is relevant to your child’s needs.

You also have 30 Wild Cards which are pink and also are coach cards with a whistle on it. These particular cards have some tips and other cards are something you need to do. For example, “You got a burst from a protein bar!” Go forward 3 spaces” or “Your shoelaces came untied. Go back 1 space”. The coaching card tips have helpful information about things like adding large numbers, multiplying by 9, and other tips to help with mental math. 30 orange Challenge Cards are math word problems and also have the math answer included on them. These cards they recommend that you don’t use if you have young children playing the game.

The game board has a running track field theme with a place for the cards in the center of the field. 6 blue spaces require action if you land on them and also when you pass it. For example: “do 5 hops” or another one is “jog in place for 15 minutes”.

8 Runner Playing Pieces are all different colors and represent a runner that you may relate too and you can find the information about each runner in the instruction book. Purple is Bootstrap Byron who is holding a rubrics cube, blue Crystal Reaction doing science, orange Carrot McArrow the baseball player, brown Mike Bobberman the gymnasium, pink Groovin’ Gabby doing speed cups, green Mya Marcher the soccer player, white Jeffrey Ulabutter who plays basketball, and yellow is Mary Matherina the ballerina. This feature is fun and unique for a board game-my son decided to void the colors out because he wanted to be blue! You don’t have to go by the sheet and completely ignore it if you prefer certain colors.

There are also a step-by-step instructions to play the game several ways to fit your family dynamics and length of play. The game is simple to play and you aren't reading a book to learn how to play the game. 

The game has races that are best determined by age, skills, and amount of time you have to play in one sitting.

100m Dash- you begin the race at the 100m mark. Starting here you will have a shorter game and it’s good for young players. Also starting at the 100m is a nice way to learn the ropes of the game.

200m Dash-You will start at the 200m mark. Intended for intermediate level and when you have time to play a longer game.

400m Dash- Start on the 400m line to start at. This option is great for older kids or advanced players who need a challenge and plan on longer game play.

How to play- After you have decided which race you plan to run and which cards to put into play you are ready to head to the start area. 

You do not have to play an entire math set of cards into play. You can do as many as you want. Example, you can just play only the  addition cards or you can even mix up all the facts into your game. You can play it to meet your students needs and skills. They do recommend you add in some of the Wild Cards into each game. If you are playing with younger kids remember to take out those Challenge Cards.

The player in lane 1 is “the coach” and begins by drawing a card from the top of the deck. The coach reads the card out-loud. You only choose one problem on a card to put into play. If you don't want to read it out loud you can also show the problems to the other players but, cover up the answer first. Two players are chosen to figure out the math equation. The coach can also let all the players participate in the question.  The first player to say the answer question correctly will move your runner 2 spaces. If you don’t answer it correctly then you don’t move forward. If the coach draws a Wild Card they will play the move themselves. 

Then the next player to play in lane 2 is the coach now and you proceed the same way with the rest of the game and proceed the same way with each additional player.

How did I use Sprint -The Mental Math Game in my homeschool?

This game was played with my daughter 17 with significant learning challenges and my 14-year-old son, mom, and sometimes dad. 

 My kids game up with the idea of each one having 2 game pieces in play. Doing this both had more math problems to solve.

We played several games throughout the last couple of weeks. I usually did this as a math game activity during school days doing smaller games with the 100m and sometimes 200m. Other times outside of school we played the 400m Dash.

A friendly competition of who rules in math!

My daughter is pretty good with basic math but struggles with larger double-digit numbers. We started with addition and subtraction for the first 2 weeks. After that, we added the multiplication facts. We haven’t played the division cards yet as my daughter gets frustrated with division and it would have been a huge melt-down. To keep it fun and challenging for her we kept to the math equations she was comfortable with. We usually played as single players and tried playing as teams. My family preferred to play single player rather than play as teams. We did play as teams a few times. My daughter and dad usually won.

This was a fun game to play. My daughter liked this a lot since she won the majority of the time. My daughter said, “I’m good at the game.” She usually wanted to play more than one round at a time. My son wasn’t as thrilled with the game as he prefers more strategy games. He did say, "I like this math game better than the silly one we played when I was younger that you made us play." "At least the theme is fun and is more challenging then rolling a dice." and  he said, “It’s not that I don’t like the game but, I think it would have been more appealing to me when I was younger.” Fair enough! I do think he would have liked it when a lot when he was younger. It would have been much more appealing to him than dice and flashcards.

I love that it does make learning math facts fun and more appealing than flashcards. It can be adapted to your family and to each student to work on the areas you want to focus on. My son also said, “they should make some fraction, decimal, algebra, measurements, and geometry card sets to buy separately for add-on card set to grow with older players.” My son likes games to evolve and get more challenging at his level. I like his suggestion with having add on cards.

I love the quality of the game and the unique game pieces and fun game board theme. I also am thrilled to see a fun math game to focus on mastering math fact skills that can be adapted to your students' skill level.

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There are 40 members of the Homeschool Review Crew that have been playing Math Sprint-The Mental Math Game from Byron’s Games. Find out more by clicking here or on the graphic below.