60 Days of Summer Fun… #13- Incorporate Math Creatively

by PALNYC on July 13, 2014 in 60 Days of Summer Fun, Math, Mathematics • 0 Comments

Why torture your child with meaningless drill and kill math when there are plenty of creative ways to explore mathematical thinking this summer.

Drill and kill may be useful when learning multiplication tables or when more practice is needed in an area of weakness. But the summer should be fun, and when incorporating math, do your best to lighten the load.

As you may know, our PALNYC Math Motherload includes a huge selection of math books, websites, games and apps to use with K-6th graders to improve and support math skills. But if you’re looking for a quick fix to satisfy your child’s Daily Learning Routine this summer, these resources offer a great solution for your child’s 20 minutes of math practice each day:

1- Card Games that are easy on the go like 24, 7 Ate 9, even Rat a Tat Cat for younger kids, and this amazing resource, Acing Math One Deck at A Time with a collection of math games ranging from Kindergarten to the upper elementary grades, using only an ordinary deck of playing cards. There are more than 60 games covering addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, percents, decimals, patterns, positive and negative integers, as well as many others. Another version is focused on 3rd to 5th graders here.

2- Ten Marks– A free web-based daily practice for the summertime.

3- Dice games like Math Dice, Greg Tang’s Dice game, Dice & Card Games to Practice Math Facts

4- The Summer Math Challenge, a free daily web-based math skills program from 2nd to 5th graders

5- Web Math Minute Ok, I know I said no drill and kill. But this is a great site when your child is trying to master multiplication tables and you want to customize the practice sheets yourself. The site also lets you print graph paper that kids can use to line up problems correctly.

6- Greg Tang Math. Great site with his books for kids that make learning math fun and easy, plus a selection of worksheets, games and more.

7- The Positive Engagement Project- offers a host of free games and resources to make learning math and other subjects fun and engaging.

8- 1001 Math Problems. A Problem a Week for Young People in grades 1st-4th and for older kids,
1001 Visual Puzzles Sian Zelbo’s math blog provides practice problem solving and experience with extracurricular math topics each week and is meant for scholars approximately in grades 1 to 4, along with the solution to the previous week’s problem.

9- Melissa Singer’s, Factor 4-In-A-Row Game for third to 6th graders. Math_3-6

10- Frances Stern’s Casino Card Game – for K-2nd graders- Math- K-2, Casino Stern

Appy Camper

Consider these great math apps for your child to do on the go:

1- General Math– Incredible Numbers App, Kakooma, Ken Ken, Carcassonne, Mathmagics, Itooch Middle School , DragonBox Algebra, Cool Math, Algebra Touch, Marble Math, Slice It, Symmetry School, Math Tools, Splash Math