DreamBox Learning®» math activities

No Homework Tonight? Fun Activities With Your Math Tool Kits!

Sue — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:34:56 +0000

Recently I suggested an easy way for parents to be ready to support early elementary math homework, by keeping a Math Tool Kit handy! But when there’s no homework assigned, you can also use your kit to have some family math fun. It’s a little like putting vegetables in the lasagna: your kids will have fun practicing their math skills! Money fun

Using the dice and the bag of change your child can brush up on money skills. Players take turns rolling the dice and adding the numbers together to determine how much they get from the “bank” (the bag of change). If you roll a four and a two you get $.06. As the money piles up kids can trade money in: trade five pennies for a nickel for example. After each player has five turns, the player with the greatest amount wins!

Dice play for any age level

Very young children can roll one or two dice. For the number that comes up, ask your child to show you that many counters; this is working on the concept of one-to-one correspondence. If you want to increase the challenge, roll one die again and take away (or add) that many. Ask your child, “How many counters do you have now?”
With older students, each player makes a 6 x 6 grid, numbering it one to six across the top and down a side. One player rolls two dice, then adds the two numbers together (or you can play with multipliers) and fills the answer in on the right square of the grid. If a one and six is rolled, that player goes over one and down six and writes the answer in that box. The first player to fill in their grid wins.

Finding patterns

Use the bag of coins or the counters in your Math Tool Kit to practice finding patterns. You start by placing six items on the table in a given order. For example, your pattern might be: dime, nickel, penny, dime, nickel, penny. Then ask your child, “What will the next three items be?” Ask him or her to make the same pattern but with different counters, such as yellow, red, and green buttons.
With older children, you can start by making a pattern with about ten objects, but taking out the fourth, fifth, and sixth objects. Have your child name the items that are missing. Or you can give them number patterns to solve. Try skip counting numbers (2, 6, 10, 14) or a growing pattern (1, 3, 6, 10).

I’m sure you can come up with more math games too, now that you have your Math Kit handy. Put them to use and make tonight a Family Math Night!

Did Daddy Text Me?

Mickelle — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:35:39 +0000

My husband and I have been traveling quite a bit lately. We used to leave our 4-year old daughter, Elle, one note for each morning. Lately, we’ve been sending text messages instead. It wasn’t long before we needed to get creative about the messages we sent, and we started looking for ways to incorporate math into these messages. Here are some recent examples:

Dear Elle, Please make sure there are 4 diapers in your brother’s diaper bag. Daddy sometimes forgets to refill it. Thank you for being my big helper. Love, Mommy
Princess, Don’t let Daddy forget to give your brother his medicine. Make sure Mommy only gives him 3 ml. Can you help her? Miss you, Daddy
Dear munchkin, Last night I had dinner with 9 people. Do you think we could fit 9 people around our table at home? See you tonight, Mommy
Hey Super Sport, Let’s both do 20 jumping jacks and 5 pushups today. I miss you. Daddy
Good Morning Elle, Do you think it’s better to drink 2 cups or 10 cups of milk a day? I can’t wait to hear what you think. Love, Mommy

It’s hard to be away from the family, and rewarding when we find ways to remind our children that we are always thinking about them. And it’s kinda cool when a 4-year old asks, “Did Daddy text me?”

April showers bring Math Awareness Month 2010 and a new activity calendar

Tracy — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:47:30 +0000

What goes into Drew Brees' awe-inspiring tosses, the jump shots of Lebron James, and bending it like Beckham?

Math Awareness Month Activity Calendar

Amazing athletic ability - of course. Practice, timing, and maybe a sprinkle of luck - no doubt. Most people don't think about it, but there's also a lot of math behind that sports magic. DreamBox Learning dedicated our new activities calendar to April's Math Awareness Month 2010 (also known as Mathematics Awareness Month).

You guessed it -- 2010's Math Awareness Month theme is mathematics & sports.

With the spring temperatures, it's time to get out there and play. Since it's Math Awareness Month, find out if humidity affects a home run. Or what mechanics do to your golf swing. It's a great time to get everyone's math awareness levels rising. Also, don't forget to ask your kids to total their highest word scores on Scrabble Day, or help their sisters and brothers with math homework on National Siblings Day. And keep watch because DreamBox Learning's 3rd grade math games will bloom in early April. We can't wait for what's in store next month! Download the 2010 Math Awareness Calendar.

World Maths Day Off and Running!

Tracy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:52:15 +0000

It's official. World Maths Day is off and running, and so far with rip-roarin' success! "But how?" you ask. "It's not March 3rd yet!" It's March 3rd somewhere in the world, though, and the competition exists across the world GMT, so students ages 5 through 18 can play each other until it is no longer March 3rd anywhere. As of this blog post there are 41,580 participants online and over 128,948,000 correct answers! It looks like World Maths Day's goal of breaking last year's record of 452,681,681 correct answers is well under way. So far Avalon Elementary's 3rd grade class is leading the age 5-8 classroom category with 119,934 correct answers and Cypress Creek High School is rocking the age 14-18 classroom category. Even cooler, though, is the fact that students from all over the world are uniting in the name of math. We can't wait to see the final results of World Maths Day.

Contig: Good Family Math Fun

Sue — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:07:06 +0000

In the spirit of sharing fun at-home math activities with parents, here's a suggestion for a great game that gives kids an opportunity to practice mental math without the boring worksheets! At the suggestion of Alexandria Jones in her Lets Play Math blog, my family recently played Contig. Alexandria is a homeschooling mom who loves math (I think she has the right philosophy: if all your children ever do is textbook math, that’s like feeding them broccoli-flavored ice cream). She suggested the game in a recent post, Contig Game: Master Your Math Facts, and included not only a link to download the game board but also variations that give you lots of ways to play it.

Looking for more Math Fun Ideas?

The game is great fun - it was a little over the head of our youngest player (first grade), but the kids loved playing it. If you're a parent who is always on the lookout for fun math activities, consider subscribing to the Lets Play Math blog - she is full of great ideas. For more math fun activities, get more people involved! Check out World Math Day on March 4th!

Learning Math at the Seattle Children's Museum

Sarah — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:31:30 +0000

I took my two young boys, ages 5 and 3, to the Seattle Children's Museum on Sunday and was quite impressed with their new exhibit "Go Figure!". Here, in one of our very own museums, is a great exhibit that has a dozen or more engaging ways for kids to think about math! We give parents tips all the time about everyday activities they can do and books they can read with their kids that incorporate math. This exhibit actually brings to life several such books and activities. There is a copy of "The Doorbell Rang" by Pat Hutchins, with a real doorbell and a child-sized door to walk through. On the other side is a play kitchen with a recipe for baking cookies, complete with measuring cups, ingredients, bowls and real spoons for stirring. You can also guess the number of cookies in a series of glass jars, and place and count the chips in a baking pan of cookies.

Learning Fun at the Childrens Museum

Right at the entrance there is a large cottage for Goldilocks and the 3 Bears (with different sized chairs), and there is an area for "The Quilt" by Ann Jonas (think of the patterns!). My 5 year old also had fun with the calendar games, and my 3 year old was enthralled with putting various boxes and weights on the balancing scales. We ended up spending about an hour in this exhibit, and the boys had a great time. I, of course, was tickled pink. I definitely recommend checking it out!

Math Learning Through Experience

Sue — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:30:47 +0000

I always say I learn everything the hard way. By that I mean I don’t learn a lesson as well when I hear about someone else’s mistake as I do when I make it myself. Experience really is the best teacher. When my son was younger I'd find myself watching him struggle with something, and biting my tongue to keep from jumping in to tell him how to do it right! I came across a news article today about some high school students who learned strategies for estimating by getting out of the classroom, going to a football stadium, and figuring out how to estimate the total number of seats in the stadium! (Learning Math Outside Class Helps Students Understand It ) I think it’s a cool idea. As more states and more districts respond to the crisis in math education and increase their focus on effective math learning, I’m sure we’ll be reading about many more cool ideas like this real-world example.

Get At Home Math Learning Activities

It's an idea we believe in -- we incorporate the learn-by-doing principle into our math lesson games, and we use parent communications to suggest activities families can do at home: DreamBox Learning's Parent Newsletter, for example, always includes tips. And when we email parents about an academic milestone their student has achieved in DreamBox, we include ideas for at-home activities that provide hands-on experience with those math concepts. I'm always looking to hear good ideas on games and activities that parents can use to promote math learning through experience - I would love to hear yours!