My seven-year-old son is still in the throes of mastering the multiplication tables. He’s had the concept of multiplication down pat for a long time and can figure out multiplication problems by skip counting or other adding-up methods, but the basic facts still do not come with ease.
That means we’ve spent a long time practicing them. Although we still use many of the games that I wrote about back in April in the article Multiplication Games – especially Mythmatical Battles – after so many months I find myself constantly looking for fresh ways to play with the same subject.
When I’m planning activities for my three-year-old daughter, I follow the seasons and holidays and make crafts, games and other activities based on the changing year. Last week, I had some extra leaf cut-outs and decided to write numbers on them for my son. I had him pick two out of a bag and multiply them. The seasonal twist was fun enough to make that simple activity last for two days.
On the third day, I added a second bag. On these leaves, I wrote the names of seasonal objects – feathers, turkeys, leaves, trees, pumpkins, corn, Pilgrim hats, etc. I had my son pick two numbers and an object, multiply the two numbers and then take a piece of paper and draw that many of the object. He picked 4 and 6 and turkeys and filled a page drawing 24 turkeys, and so on. His favorite part is when I have to take the paper from him and painstakingly count all the crazy turkeys to make sure he’s got the right answer! Some times we would have races to see who could draw 48 Pilgrim hats first.
A few days later, when we had amassed lots of pages of tiny turkeys and pumpkins and Pilgrim hats, this game turned into a new one. We laid the pages out on the floor and then drew two number leaves. We had to look, from our perch on the couch, and choose the paper that had a number of pictures which came closest to our product. The person who picked the closest paper got a point, and we played again. This was a fantastic exercise in estimation & it evolved naturally out of a simple, seasonal way to practice facts!
Do you have other ideas for practicing multiplication facts? I could use a few new tricks!
Alexa teaches her kids with love, laughter and games at Mind Games.
Image courtesy of stock.xchng
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
