A Prime Number Maths Game - 4th Grade

What is a prime number? Check out this great way to learn. Find a deck of cards and deal them out. We hope your hand has a lot of prime numbers in it! If it does, you have a good chance of winning. If not, we wish you luck when you reach your hand over to the draw pile. Before you know it, you’ll have the first several prime numbers memorized and some great skills to take with you back to math class.

Terms to Know:
Prime Number: a number with no factors excepting itself and 1 (The first several prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, and 23. The number 1 is not a prime number and is instead classified as a unit.)

Factor: a number that divides evenly into another number

What You Need:
Deck of playing cards

What You Do:
Shuffle the deck and deal five cards to each player.

In this game, Aces = 1, Jacks = 11, Queens = 12, and Kings = 13.

Players take turns discarding cards, face up and one at a time, into a discard pile. Players may only discard prime numbers or a group of cards whose sum is a prime number. If a player is unable to discard a prime number, they must draw from the deck until they find or create one.

Play continues until the pack is depleted. The winning player is the player with the fewest cards left in their hand.

Build Animals Piggy Banks - 2nd Grade!

Learn about coins and their value by making an animal piggy bank. You can talk about a special trip or item for which your child can save money. This project also teaches your child to recycle a can and egg carton. Gather your supplies and be creative as you design an animal bank. Below are three suggestions for animals; however, you can use your imagination and make others.

What You Need:
empty coffee can or baby formula can
knife
scissors
markers
paintbrush
pencil
wiggly eyes
4 egg carton cups
hot glue gun
newspapers
Elmer’s Glue

Pig Bank
pink foam sheet
1 pink pipe cleaner
pink acrylic paint

Lion Bank
yellow foam sheet
yarn for the mane
yellow acrylic paint
1 yellow pipe cleaner

Sheep Bank
white foam sheet
cotton balls

What You Do:
Spread newspapers on the table. Take off the lid and paint the can the desired color for your animal. Paint the 4 egg carton cups for the legs. Allow these to dry. For the sheep, you do not need to paint your can. Just smear glue on the can and add cotton balls.

Using a pencil, trace the lid two times on the foam sheet. One circle is for the head, and one is for the animal’s backside. Cut these two circles out. If you’re making the pig, trace a smaller circle on the pink foam for the snout. Perhaps you can trace the bottom of the acrylic paint bottle. Cut this out. Snip off two small triangles for the pig’s ears. For the lion, cut two semicircles for the ears on the yellow foam sheet. For the sheep, cut long, skinny triangles for the ears.

Have a parent hot glue the wiggly eyes and ears on one circle. For the pig, hot glue the smaller circle or snout below the eyes.Using markers, make two dots on the snout of the pig. For the lion and sheep, draw the nose, mouth, freckles, and outline the ears. Then put Elmer’s glue around the edge of the lion’s face. Cut small pieces of yarn for the mane and stick on.

Next, an adult can cut a slit in the foam face and lid for the mouth. This is where the money will be inserted into the bank. Hot glue the face onto the lid by lining up the mouth holes.To make the tail for the pig, cut the pink pipe cleaner in half. Wrap it around a pencil to make a curl. Using scissors, cut a small slit in the middle of the foam circle. Insert part of the curly pipe cleaner and twist it to secure. The curly part should stick out for the piggy tail. For the lion’s tail, cut a slit in the middle of the foam circle. Insert a yellow pipe cleaner and bend it to look like a tail. For the sheep, glue on a cotton ball. Have an adult hot glue these circles to the bottom of the can.

A parent can hot glue the legs to the bottom of the can. Now your bank animal is complete!
Lay your coins on the table. Point to a coin and say its name. If correct, you may feed your animal bank. Try saying its value and feed your animal. Keep feeding your animal to save your money for something special

A fun way to practice measuring!

Check out this webpage and have fun measuring things!

http://onlineintervention.funbrain.com/measure/index.html

Make a Number Game - Perfect for 2nd Graders

This game provides your child with the opportunity to create, write, and read numbers. He’ll be using all of these skills in the middle grades, when he uses numbers, decimals, fractions, and percents to describe operations, computations, measurements, and patterns. Understanding the value of each digit in a number strengthens your child’s mathematical communication skills. Creating and reading four-digit numbers will give your child an opportunity to practice the number skills he’s learning at school. So get ready and roll the number cube!

What You Need:
Number cube
Paper
Pencil

What You Do:
Each player draws four short horizontal lines on a piece of paper. Each of the horizontal lines represents a place value. The first line represents thousands, the second line represents hundreds, the third line represents tens, and the fourth line represents ones.
Now it’s time to choose a goal - do you want to show the greatest 4-digit number or the smallest 4-digit number? Once you’ve agreed on greatest or smallest, it’s time to start rolling the number cube.
Each player rolls once and then writes the number shown on the cube on one of the lines on his paper. Here’s where strategy begins. Each player chooses where he wants to place each digit. For example, if a student rolls a “1” and the goal is to create the largest number, he may choose to place the 1 on the horizontal line holding the ones place.
This game continues until both players have filled in all four columns. The one who achieves the game goal wins that round!

What's going on? This game reinforces the connection between abstract digits and the way their values will differ depending on their place in a large number. Second graders often struggle with this idea, especially as numbers get bigger, and the more you can practice, the better. Plan to play lots of rounds--when it comes to math fundamentals, practice really does make perfect.

Explore Circumference with Your Bicycle Wheel - 5th Grade Activity

By the end of Primary, students have already learned about the basic properties of geometric shapes, but they are still exploring the many ways that geometry translates to real-world situations. Sure, finding the distance around, or the "perimeter", of a polygon like a square or triangle is pretty easy. But how about finding the distance around a circle, the "circumference"?

This hands-on-activity gives your child practice in finding the circumference of an object, while teaching her to use a step-by-step approach to gain the information necessary to solve a mathematical problem. Plus, it's a great way to get outside and have some family fun in the sun!

What You Need:

•bicycle
•a sidewalk, or some other place to ride
•a length of string
•yardstick
•paper
•pencil
•chalk (optional)

What You Do:

Step 1

Have your child ride her bicycle down the sidewalk a short, specific distance. Draw a chalk line, or use a marker such as a tree or a sign to show her where to stop. Ask her to estimate how many times her bicycle wheel went around.

Step 2

Use the string to help your child find the circumference of her bicycle wheel. Ask your child to lay her bicycle down. Hold the end of the string tightly on the tire and have your child to take the other end of the string and place it around the tire until it meets the end you are holding. Cut the string so that is reflects the measurement of the circumference of the tire. Help your child measure the string to the nearest inch. Next, have her measure the distance her bicycle wheel traveled to the nearest inch.

Step 3

Now that you have the measurement of the tire’s circumference and the measurement of the distance traveled, it's time to find the number of times your child’s bicycle wheel went around. Ask her how she would set up the problem. Working together, divide the distance traveled by the circumference of the tire to find the answer!

Top 10 Ways to Help Your Kids Do Well in Numeracy!

Mastering MathMastering mathematics is absolutely essential for future opportunities in school and careers. Your children will need to reach a certain level of competency in math to take many advanced high-school courses, to be admitted to college or university, and to have a wide variety of career choices. Here's how you can help them maximize their math-smarts.

1. Make sure your children understand mathematical concepts. Otherwise, math becomes a meaningless mental exercise of just memorizing rules and doing rote drills. Have your children manipulate objects to figure out basic concepts. For addition, they could add one, two, or more blocks to a pile of blocks and then tell you how many blocks are in the pile.

2. Help them master the basic facts. Mastery of a basic fact means that children can give an answer in less than three seconds. Considerable drill is required for children to give quick responses. Use flash cards to help your children learn the basic facts. When they don't know an answer, have them lay out objects to solve the problem.

3. Teach them to write their numbers neatly. Twenty-five percent of all errors in solving math problems can be traced back to sloppy number writing. Improve your children's number-writing skills by having them trace over numbers that you have written. Suggest they use graph paper to keep the numbers in problems neatly aligned.

4. Provide help immediately when your children need it. Math is one subject in which everything builds upon what has been previously learned. For example, a failure to understand the concept of percent leads to problems with decimals.

5. Show them how to handle their math homework. Doing math homework reinforces the skills your children are learning in class. Teach them to begin every assignment by studying the textbook or worksheet examples. Then have them redo the examples before beginning the assignment to make sure they understand the lesson.

6. Encourage your children to do more than the assigned problems. Considerable practice is necessary for your children to hone their math skills. If the teacher only assigns the even problems, having them do some of the odd ones will strengthen their skills. The more time your children spend practicing their skills, the sooner they will develop confidence in their abilities.

7. Explain how to solve word problems. Mathematicians have an expression: To learn to solve problems, you must solve problems. Teach your children to read a word problem several times. Also, have them draw a picture or diagram to describe it. Make it easier for them to understand the steps in a problem by teaching them to substitute smaller numbers for larger ones.

8. Help your children learn the vocabulary of mathematics. They will never get a real feeling for math nor learn more advanced concepts without an understanding of its vocabulary. Check that your children can define new terms. If not, have them use models and simple problems to show you they understand how the term is used.

9.Teach them how to do math "in their head."One of the major ways to solve problems is by using mental math. Kids should use this method frequently instead of using pencil and paper or a calculator. When helping your children with a problem, help them determine when it would be appropriate to use mental math.

10. Make mathematics part of your children's daily life. Mathematics will become more meaningful when your kids see how important it is in so many real-life situations. Encourage them to use math in practical ways. For example, ask them to space new plants a certain distance apart, double a recipe, and pay bills in stores.

Read more on FamilyEducation: http://school.familyeducation.com/math/parenting/38812.html#ixzz1eCV3j6fd

Mathematical Magic Trick

Appropriate for Grades 3 and up (people who know their 2 times tables and 5 times tables)!

Tell your friend to pick their favorite number between 1 and 100, but don't tell you what it is!

Note: If your friends are children, have them pick a number between 1 and 9 so they are able to do the next steps. If you're doing this with mom and dad, you can tease them and make them pick REALLY big numbers so they have to work hard at the math. They'll be very surprised when you come back with the answer so quickly!

Have them multiply their number by 2.

Have them multiply their number by 5.

Have them tell you the answer they've come up with.

Drop the zero from the answer they gave you and tell them what their number was!