Best Math Competitions for 4th Graders

If you went looking for math competitions for 4th graders and felt like the list suddenly got longer, you’re right — 4th grade is the year it roughly doubles. The four contests your child could already enter in 2nd and 3rd grade are all still here, and three more open up: MOEMS, Math League, and MathCON each start at grade 4. For the first time, the hard part isn’t finding a competition your child can do. It’s resisting the urge to sign up for all of them. You don’t need to be a math person to sort through it, and you definitely don’t need to enter seven.

This is the 4th-grade shortlist. For every elementary contest in full detail, our complete guide to math competitions for elementary students is the catalog, and the decision guide helps you choose. If you’ve got a younger child too, the 3rd-grade version covers the smaller menu a year earlier. Here, we’re answering one question: what can a 4th grader enter, and which one should you actually pick?

The short answer: the menu doubles to seven

A 4th grader can enter seven nationally-recognized math competitions. Four carry over from the younger grades — Math Kangaroo, the RSM International Math Contest, the Noetic Learning Math Contest, and the Continental Mathematics League (CML) — and three are brand new this year: MOEMS, Math League, and MathCON.

Before the details, one distinction makes the whole list easier to navigate — who signs up:

• You can register your own child, no school required: Math Kangaroo, RSM, Noetic’s At-Home Edition, CML’s home-school entry, and now MathCON. That’s five you can run yourself.
• You need a school or teacher to run it: MOEMS and Math League. Both are wonderful, but a parent can’t enter a child solo — they’re built around a school team.

So if your child’s school doesn’t do competitions, you still have five solid options you can set up from home. And if it does, you’ve got a ready-made team to join.

The three that just opened at grade 4

These are why 4th grade feels like a turning point — so let’s start here.

MOEMS — the classic elementary olympiad (school-run)

If you’ve heard one “real” elementary math competition name, it’s probably this one. MOEMS (Math Olympiads for Elementary and Middle Schools) opens its Division E to grades 4, 5, and 6 — so 4th grade is the youngest a child can start. More than 120,000 students take it each year.

It’s a season, not a one-day test: five contests across the year, one a month from November through March, each with five problems in 30 minutes. The problems are “non-routine” — the kind that reward a clever idea over a memorized procedure — and there’s no calculator. Scores accumulate over the five contests (0–25 individually).

The catch for parents: MOEMS is run at your child’s own school by a “PICO” — a Person In Charge of Olympiads, usually a teacher or a parent volunteer who registers a team (up to 35 students) and proctors each contest. There’s no sign-your-own-kid-up option; it lives and dies by a school team, which costs around $175 for the whole team (the school usually covers it). If your school doesn’t run MOEMS, the move is to ask a teacher whether they’d start a team — it only takes one willing adult. When you’re ready to prepare, our MOEMS Division E guide teaches the strategies behind those non-routine problems rather than just drilling answers.

MathCON — the new one you can sign up for yourself

MathCON is the new option that doesn’t need a school at all. It runs for grades 4–12, and — the key part — parents can register their child as an individual participant through the MathCON portal, just like Math Kangaroo. No team, no teacher.

The first round is an online, multiple-choice test of 32 questions that your child takes during a window running roughly from mid-January to mid-March (this season it’s open January 13 to March 17, 2027). Registration is about $75 per student, which also includes a set of weekly practice tests to warm up on. Top scorers from the online round are invited to an in-person National Finals in May. For a 4th grader, the online round on its own is a perfectly good first experience — the finals are a bonus to aim for, not the point.

Math League — short, snappy, school-run

The Math League elementary contest also opens at grade 4 (it runs grades 4–8). The format is brisk: 30 multiple-choice questions in 30 minutes, on a three-page paper that gets harder as it goes — the first page is approachable, the last page is the real challenge. It’s held in the spring.

Like MOEMS, this one is school-only — in Math League’s words, “only schools may purchase the current year’s contests,” so a parent can’t register a child directly. If your school already runs it, it’s a quick, low-key way to give competition math a try; if not, it’s another one to raise with a teacher.

The four your 4th grader could already enter

These carry over from the younger grades. Quick version, then a couple of notes:

Math Kangaroo — still the simplest one to run yourself

A 4th grader takes Math Kangaroo’s Grades 3–4 level: 24 questions, 75 minutes, multiple choice with five answer choices, and — the feature kids appreciate most — no penalty for a wrong answer, so a guess never costs anything. You register your own child (in person, proctored online, or a self-proctored virtual sitting at home), it’s held on the third Thursday in March (March 18 in 2027), and it runs about $18 early, $35 later. Our Math Kangaroo format guide walks through exactly what the paper looks like.

RSM International Math Contest — online from home

The RSM Foundation’s contest is open to all students in grades 1–8, and because your child is past grade 3, you can take the online version from home — no RSM branch required. It’s about $15 early, $25 later, held in early February.

Noetic Learning Math Contest — and its $29 At-Home Edition

Noetic runs 20 problems in 45 minutes (50 online), twice a year (around November and April). A school team is $99, but the At-Home Edition lets you register your own child for $29, proctor it yourself, and get back a raw score, a national percentile, and a printable certificate — a real motivator for a 4th grader who wants to know how they stack up nationally.

CML — now the Grades 4–9 program

Here’s a change worth knowing: a 4th grader is no longer on the little kids’ paper. CML moves grades 4 through 9 into its main program, which means two things are different from grade 3. First, it’s now five meets across the year (up from three), each with six written problems, with step-by-step solutions provided. Second, students are entered in one of two ability divisions — Euclidean (average difficulty) or Pythagorean (more demanding) — so a child can be placed at the right stretch. A school team is $100; the home-school rate is about $25 per child for families whose school doesn’t participate.

What’s still over the horizon

Two big names still aren’t a realistic fit at grade 4, and it’s worth knowing why so you don’t chase them early:

• AMC 8: the rule says “grade 8 or below,” so a 4th grader is technically eligible — but it’s built for middle schoolers and pitched well above 4th-grade material. Think of it as the destination, not this year’s contest.
• MATHCOUNTS: its Competition Series is for grades 6–8. Several years off.

A 4th grader doing MOEMS or Math Kangaroo today is already walking the path that leads to AMC 8 later. Our full elementary guide maps the whole progression if you like to see where it goes.

Is your 4th grader actually ready?

Fourth grade is a genuine step up — it’s the first MOEMS year, the problems lean more toward “you have to think,” and CML even sorts kids into difficulty divisions. A typical 4th grader is squarely in range, and a keen one will want the stretch. A few signs your child is ready:

• They like multi-step puzzles and don’t give up the moment a problem looks unfamiliar.
• They can sit and focus for 30 to 75 minutes.
• They read a word problem on their own.
• They’re comfortable with multiplication and division and the basics of fractions, and they notice patterns.

That’s the bar — curiosity and a little persistence, not a “gifted” label.

How to choose — and why “just one” still wins

With seven options, the 4th-grade trap is over-enrolling and turning a fun thing into a chore. Pick one anchor and let it be enough:

1. Your school runs MOEMS or Math League? Join that team — a built-in group of classmates is a big motivator at this age.
2. You want to sign up yourself, simply? Math Kangaroo (virtual), Noetic’s $29 At-Home Edition, or MathCON’s individual entry — all a few clicks from home.
3. You like a written, work-it-out season and a bargain? CML’s home-school entry at about $25.

Whatever you pick, keep the preparation small and cheerful — fifteen minutes a few times a week beats any cram session, and at this age the goal is for your child to want the next one. That’s exactly why our free Problem of the Week exists: one good problem in your inbox, no cost, no stakes.

The thing that matters more than which contest you pick

It’s tempting to treat a longer menu as a checklist, but in 4th grade the experience still matters far more than the count. A good competition is the one your child finishes and says “that was fun, can I do another?” — and any of these seven can deliver that if you keep the pressure low and treat the score as beside the point.

So pick one. Do a handful of practice problems together first so the format isn’t a surprise — our free Math Kangaroo practice problems for grades 3–4, with full step-by-step solutions, are matched to this age. And for the morning of, our guide on what to expect at your child’s first math competition is the one to read the week before.

A 4th grader doing MOEMS for fun is already on the road that leads to AMC 8 down the line. The first step is just signing up for one.

This article is not affiliated with or endorsed by Math Kangaroo USA, Kangourou sans Frontières, Noetic Learning, Continental Mathematics League, the RSM Foundation, MOEMS, Math League, MathCON, or the Mathematical Association of America. All competition details come from each organization’s official materials and can change — confirm dates and fees on the official site before you register.

Once you’ve picked one, we make affordable, original prep guides to match — for Math Kangaroo (Grades 3–4), MOEMS Division E, Noetic (Grades 2–4), and CML (Grades 2–6). You can browse them all, or start completely free with our weekly Problem of the Week.