Pelmathism – Global Maths and Science Lesson 2025

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Play PELMATHISM joining thousands around the world in the Global Maths and Science Lesson GMSL2025 to help to raise funds for AIMSSEC.

Join the discussion in the comments here on the AIMING HIGH website.  Share the versions of the game that you create. Pelmathism is one of the many games in the AIMING HIGH book Let’s Play Mathematically, games designed for enjoyment while, at the same time, being school curriculum related.

Download the Notes for Teachers 

Click a link below to download a set of large cards. Print and cut out the cards. All versions of Pelmathism are played by the same rules. At first you could make the game easier, by playing with 6 pairs of cards, then later with 10, then 18 pairs.

PELMATHISM RULES Before you play, choose which pairs of cards you are going to play with and shuffle them. There are two ways to play the game, SHOW as an introduction, and HIDE which is more of a challenge.

SHOW Place the cards face up on a table, in rows and columns or just spread out. Players take turns to choose 2 cards. When they match, the player keeps the pair. If the cards don’t match, the next player has a turn. The winner is the player with the most pairs when all the pairs of cards have been claimed.

HIDE Place the cards face down on a table, either in rows and columns or just spread out. Players take turns to choose 2 cards. When the cards match, the player keeps the pair and has another turn. If the cards don’t match, the next player has a turn. The winner is the player with the most pairs when all the pairs of cards have been claimed.

• Blank cards to make your own game
• One to Eight Memory Game for Early Years
• Addition Memory Game for Lower Primary
• Game 1 FI – Fractions and Images
• Game 2 FD – Fractions and Decimals
• Game 3 DI – Decimals and Images
• Game 4 FP – Fractions and Percentages
• Game 5 FI – Percentages and Images
• Game 6 DP – Decimals and Percentages
• Game 7 FDPI – Fractions, Decimals, Percentages and Images

The image here shows some cards for FI Pelmathism involving fractions and images. There are other versions involving decimals and percentages and simpler versions for very young learners that don’t involve fractions in any way. Each number occurs twice in the pack of 36 cards in 2 of the possible representations and the game involves finding matching pairs.

If the cards are arranged in rows and columns, map style references can be used to refer to them. For example, in the Fractions and Images game shown, E6 refers to the image for $\frac{5}{3}$ or one and two thirds.

FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

You could make a set of cards with simple addition sums as shown here, and you could include cards with different numbers of dots to count. Make new cards when your children are ready for a bigger challenge.

Download a set of blank cards and create many variations of this game.

Create your own Pelmathism game for other topics. For example, match pictures to the names of the objects, match calculations to the answers, match numbers to the same number written as a product of prime factors, match diagrams to statements of theorems or match quadratic expressions to factors. There are more possibilities.

Click here to play the new NRICH interactive version of this game against the computer. A similar version of the well-known Pelmanism game was originally published by NRICH and we use our versions here with permission of the University of Cambridge, all rights reserved.