What games do you play (online, homemade, board games) to help your child learn their addition facts? My dd is 8 yrs old and we are so close to knowing all her addition facts (we use Math U See), but sometimes she still has to think about her 9’s and 8’s.
We have Three Primary Math Games (a board game), and we’ve made a couple games from online (math memory and caterpillar math). We’ve played online games like Addition Machine, Mr Moon Rocket, and Dino Disco.
Just looking for some fresh ideas to help these addition facts stick, so we can move on to subtraction! She wants to move on, but I don’t want her getting frustrated with not knowing them quickly…
Math-It by Elmer Brooks is awesome for addition fact retention – especially those 8’s and 9’s. We’ve also enjoyed Math Muggins and Knock Out board games. Peggy Kaye’s book Games for Math has lots of great ideas as well!
We play Math Uno – use Uno cards and play as normal, except whenever she puts down a number card she has to add 9 to it (or whatever fact you’re working on). If she gets it right, you have to draw and extra card, if she gets it wrong then she has to draw an extra card.
The MUS Yahoo group also has a list of games to play to reinforce facts.
Thanks so much! Rebekah, I remember your posting your idea for Uno, thanks for the reminder! We’ll be playing that game tomorrow since I have it on hand!
Heather, thanks so much for the great game ideas. Math It seems a bit pricey now, but I’m going to save the board games for future gift ideas! And I’ve requested Games for Math and can’t wait to use it, looks great!
Not a game, but my 8yo wasn’t getting facts quickly and I took an idea from either this forum or Ambleside group, I think. My son was moving quickly through his MUS book, but I wanted fact memorization quicker. So instead of 2 pages per day, I started having him do 1 pg. per day and 1 page of math facts copywork. I copied sheets from MUS and another math site (can look it up if you want it). He couldn’t just write the answers, he had to write the whole problem and the answer. Last week we did flashcards and he was so much quicker. Just another idea:) Gina
P.S. If you try this, make sure your dd understands she’s not supposed to copy all the problems, and THEN all the answers. My son kept asking why he had to copy them instead of just write the answers on his sheet—-he didn’t get that he was supposed to write one problem w/answer at a time:)
I didn’t start this thread, but if momto2blessings could give that site address for copying math facts, that would help me. We used to do that awhile ago but the way I was doing it was using up too much ink/paper. I couldn’t change the font size, etc. Thanks. This thread is helping me a ton.
momto2blessings, I saw the math copywork idea also and we’ve been doing that, but unfortunately my daughter got so burnt out and dreaded math! I think it was helping her remember her facts for some time. However, she would rather have an entire page of…GULP…story problems! Yes, she loves story problems!
If anyone knows a site of just story problems for addition facts let me know!
So for now, every day I print one sheet of addition problems from http://www.themathworksheet.com, and she just focuses on adding by 2’s or 8’s or 9’s etc. Then we play a math game of some sort if we have time.
my3boys, the site is: http://www.math-drills.com. It has lots of problems per page and many more variations than the MUS site. Hope that helps!
Tara, sorry your daughter hated math copywork. My son didn’t particularly care for it either, but it didn’t take long and worked so well I think I’ll have to have him do it for subtraction:) Sorry, I don’t know any story problem page site. Gina
Gina, yes, I think we did copywork for months on end! So she got burned out. She is particularly fond of copywork for English either, but I keep her interest with copying from books with pictures like Peter Rabbit.
OOOH, I just checked out math-drills.com and LOVE it! Much easier to use than mathworksheet.com. THANKS!!
Tara, oh yeah, I see how months could get old. We haven’t gone that long at it. Glad you like the drill page. Good luck with facts! :)Gina
P.S. I don’t know if your daughter has any friends who are at a similar level, but what helped my eldest learn hers was we told them there was going to be a math facts competition with prizes. My daughter really practiced for this! All I did was show a flashcard and whoever got the answer first kept the card–most cards won. Of course, I had prizes for both of them:)