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Bean Game

Required: Beans

Players: Two or three

Take an amount of large beans, or small items to hold in your hands. Decide on a number to work on like 8. Have your player count out 8 beans. Place the beans in your hand and hide them behind your back.

While they’re behind your back put some beans in each hand. Like 3 in one hand and 5 in the other. Show the player the beans in one hand. They must tell you how many you have in the other hand. Play this again using another combination. This helps your child learn all the combinations of a number sum.

Bean Plates

Required: Paper Plates and dried beans

Players: Small groups

To help children learn multiplication here is a great idea for them to visually see the concept. Use small paper plates for the small number and place beans on them for the multiplier. Example 3 plates and 5 beans on each plate is 3 X 5 = 15. You can also use three plates for the addition and subtraction problems. Plate one will have 3 beans, plate two will have 5 beans and plate three will be what 3 + 5 equals 8 beans.

Card Math

Required: Deck of cards, paper and pencil

Players: Two

If you need a fun way to learn multiplications with your child try this game. Both of you should have a pencil and sheet of paper. Make five lines in a column on one corner of both papers and then a small line below the far right of the column for a total sum amount.

Start out with a deck of cards and use only the 1’s through 5’s. Shuffle the cards and deal two faced up the other player. They are to write down the two numbers, multiply them and write the answer in a tally column. You then deal two cards to yourself, say the multiplied sum out loud and write the answer on your paper.

Then repeat until all the cards are gone. At that point you should both have five sets of cards. Tally up the to answers on both sheets, the person with the highest number is the winner.

You can play again until you have mastered 1-5’s. Do this a couple times of week for a few minutes a day. Once they can do 1-5’s you can replace the lower numbers with the next higher set of cards 2-6’s, 3-7’s or make the columns longer example 2-7’s.

Doo Bags

Required: Small Ziploc storage bag, styling gel (Dippetty Doo) and food coloring

Measure out about 4 tablespoons of styling gel into a Ziploc bag and add several drops of food coloring. Close bag while removing any air in bag and then have kids mix food coloring around in gel until all one color.

Once mixed have the kids lay the bags on a flat surface and now they can practice writing their letters or numbers. A great activity to help improve fine motor skills. Keep track of where they take their bags and advise them not to open them so they don’t make a mess.

Shaving Cream Writing

Required: Foil or wax paper and can of shaving cream

Lay out wax paper or tin foil on a work counter or kitchen table so that it’s nice and flat. Let the kids spray a large pile of shaving cream onto the area. Have them spread out the cream and practice their writing skills.

This activity will be very helpful with fine motor skills, those visual and tactical learners will benefit from this. The more senses you use, the more you learn. Do this activity to practice letters, writing words, writing cursive, writing numbers and doing addition. Make learning fun!!!

Yangtze

Required: Game of Yangtze

Players: Two to four

Great game to purchase that you should add to your game cupboard. This game is great for those grade schoolers in learning to do simple addition and multiplication problems. Some kids need different ways to help them better retain what they are learning.

Repeating multiplication over and over is hard for some. If you can help them apply the concept in different ways, they have a great chance of retaining what they have learned. The game of Yangtze has players adding and multiplying numbers from 1-6 by as high as 5 if your lucky. It’s a great start to help children understand the concept of simple addition and multiplication.

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