Math centers

I am not a fan of math.

Our children are not fans of math.

No one I know is fond of math.

It however is one of those things you just have to suck it up and complete. Why not attempt to make it suck a bit less? That is the though running through my head as I attempted to set up math centers for our 9 yr old daughter.

Curious what I managed to put together? Well wait no longer! Here you go!

I saw a "Clock Flower" post on pinterest and decided we could do that! We set up this "clock flower" in our school room. The little leaf reminds the kids that the little hand represents the hour. The large leaf the large hand. The petals have the minutes for each number. I laminated everything and then our daughter helped to put everything together. This is the only clock in the house that our kids can actually read. I am hoping that after some time has passed we will be able to progress to reading any clock.

Multiplication war is always a hit in our house. Very simple rules. Each player gets the same amount of cards face down in front of them. The players then flip one card over at a time. The player with the higher card total wins the hand and takes the card pile. The person with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

Pop and add was a big hit in our house. This game came pre-assembled from an educational store. You however could just as easily make it with two dice and some manipulatives. You add the total on the dice together, using manipulatives if needed. This could also be done with subtraction or multiplication depending on what concept you are working on at the time.

Mulitplication Jenga. Super simple game again. Each stick has a multiplication problem written on it. You pull a stick out and have to answer the problem before you can move on. You could easily make this game from a standard Jenga game. Again this could be changed to addition, subtraction, division, fractions, decimals, sight words, ABC's, anything you can think of would work!

The clumsy thief was another pre-assembled game from an educational store. The goal is to make 100 from the cards in your hand. Each pile of 100 is then placed in front of you. If the other player has a thief card they can "steal" your pile for their own. You can steal your pile back by placing a jail card over the thief. That pile can then never be stolen again. The person with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Shopping Spree has to be the kids favorite game. They beg to play this game, even taking it with us to swim team practice! The game rules change based on the age of the player. Each player is given a certain amount of money at the beginning of the game. The goal is to correctly budget their money while shopping for a certain amount of items. Don't forget to save enough to pay to get your car out of the parking garage!

Last but not least is the addition of simple manipulatives. Our daughter is obsessed with all amphibians so we went with a frog and turtle set. She uses them to "see" her math problems. Here she is figuring out 3x12. The cute little frogs keep her focused and help her to understand the concept by seeing it in action.

Those are our current math centers for our 9 yr old daughter. Math may not be our favorite subject but anytime we can complete an objective without tears I feel like we have won a giant battle.

I would love to hear about your math activities! Hit me up!