Making Math More Fun!
Fun Math Faves from a Homeschooling Mom
I remember walking into my son’s 2nd grade classroom for a Parent-Teacher Conference. He’d been required to draw a picture of his “hope and dream” for the year. When I saw his drawing hanging on the wall, my heart sank. A picture is worth a thousand words. As I analyzed the drawing I realized we had to make a change. My inner child could totally relate. I never equated math with fun mostly because it wasn’t taught to me in a vibrant, fun way. I remember feeling trapped in pages of repetitive worksheet drudgery. While something is to be gained through this approach, I don’t think it hurts to add some joy.
I took my boy along to scan the shelves of local bookstores and toy shops in search of items that would bring math to life. We searched for apps and even checked out YouTube. Here are a few of our fun math favorites:
The thing we love most about the Splash Math is that we can pull K-5 math games out on our mobile phone just about anywhere. He’s even done it in the gym while I worked out. He’s never complained about the app, in fact he dives right in. We enjoy laughing at the goofy little fish and hippo character that pops up during levels. The sounds and coins delivered for a level well done are rewarding. Splash Math is in line with common core standards if that’s important to you and they email a weekly report so that you get a sense of your kid’s progress.
Number Pyramid is a free interactive math puzzle for K-4 which focuses on addition and subtraction. Using the values from the blocks that are given, you can solve for the values of the empty blocks in the pyramid. My son willingly spends a great deal of time with it and reports that it’s “very fun.” We use it on our desktop, but it’s available in a mobile app for your iPhone or iPad as well.
The force was with us when we happened upon this series of Pre-K-4 workbooks by Workman. Star Wars enthusiast, like us, will love solving word problems to help out their favorite characters. I only wish they had these when I was growing up. Here’s an excerpt from Star Wars Workbooks, 3rd Grade Math:
“Imagine R2-D2 works to repair his gadgets at the rebel base. He works on 6 gadgets each hour for 4 hours. If he fixes 17 of them, how many gadgets were not fixed?”
The only thing on the multiplication table that never escaped me was “7 times 3 is 21!” That’s because my sister happened to sing it to me. For this reason, I swear by math songs by NUMBERROCK, a series of music videos available on YouTube. Songs featuring math rules and expressions are delivered to you over surprisingly decent tracks. Most of the videos are creatively done, hip-hop inspired and catchy. We really love the Rounding Numbers Song.
Pasta e fagioli,
Pasta and beans! I use this method to teach the concept behind addition, subtraction, multiplication and division just like the ancient bean counters who came before us. It helps with mathematical thinking to actually see 100 divided by 10 played out in pasta. We physically divide 100 pieces of farfalle into 10 equal groups so that the concept of division becomes super clear and lets face it, everyone loves playing with food.
Multiplication War, Grade 3 by Flashkids is a card game modeled after the traditional War card game. Each player is dealt a face down hand. You turn over your top card and compete to solve multiplication problems on two or more cards to see which player has the highest product. The player with the highest product gets the hand. We play this for hours and have added the Division War cards to our deck for even more of a challenge.
Whether you’re a homeschooler or a schooler, we hope this inspires you to have a little more fun with your math. Thanks for reading!
