Number Grid Puzzles (free printable)

Our youngest son had a "fill in the missing numbers in the number grid" math assignment. I thought it would be a snap for him, but as he sometimes transposes numbers, it became a source of major frustration. Oy!

To familiarize him a little more with number grids and some of the quick addition and subtraction you can do with them, I made a few activities. These were inspired by Playdough to Plato's peek-a-boo chart and Mrs. T's First Grade Class number puzzles.

You can download this 100 number grid activity for free from Google Drive here. It's a 3-page PDF. 

NOTE: If you are a teacher, use your personal gmail account if it requires you to request permission. Most school districts restrict emails from outside their domain, and therefore I can't grant access and let you know it's available.

Activity #1: 10 more, 10 less, 1 more, 1 less
I printed the number grid on white card stock. I printed page two of the free printable PDF on colored card stock. I cut the center plus-sign out. Then I added white gift wrap tissue squares to the plus signs "arms" making those squares translucent (vellum would work well too), and left the center empty. For the sake of durability, I ran this sheet through my laminator.

With the 10 more, 10 less, 1 more, 1 less page laminated, I wrote some simple math problems on it in the blank area (e.g. 13+10= , 47-10=, 91+1=, 74+1=) with a dry-erase marker. My son placed the laminated page over the number grid so the first number in the equation was in the center. Then he could easily see in the translucent squares which was his answer (i.e. 10 less was directly above, 10 more directly below, 1 more to the right, and 1 less to the left). This made solving the math problems easy!

Activity #2: Number Grid Puzzles
Now I printed the number grid on colored card stock and printed an empty grid on white card stock. I cut the colored grid apart into a variety of puzzles that were about 10-11 squares each. 

Once done, I cut the number squares apart and handed him a few piles of puzzles. He arranged them wherever on the blank grid, remembering 10 less is above, 10 more is below, 1 more is on the right, 1 less is on the left. When he completed this puzzle, he moved on to the next. You can make approximately 7-8 puzzles per grid.

Order of Operations FREE Printable Game

Knowing the order of operations is important. Without knowing what to do first, next, after that, and last in a math problem like the following means the difference between getting the answer right or getting it very wrong.

7 x (4 + 1) - 7 x 2 =

Aside from the acronym PEMDAS and the acrostic "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally," I wanted to find a fun way to reinforce the order:

1. parenthesis
2. exponents
3. multiplication or division
4. addition or subtraction

I made a fun game for us to play.

What You Need

The PDF of the game board, cards, and spinner (download it from Google Drive here)

Heavyweight card stock

Scissors or paper cutter

Recycled chip board (aka empty cereal box) to mount the glue the spinner to

Glue

Brad

Safety pin (optional, but this makes a quick, easy, and effective spinner)

Preparations

Print a copy of the game board for every player (page 1 of the PDF). Print the spinner. Print an extra page of the SPIN cards. If you're playing with more than two people, print two sets of cards (i.e. two pages of each card type and four SPIN cards).

Cut the cards apart and shuffle well.

Glue the page with the spinner on it to the chipboard and cut out. Either poke a hole with a nail through the middle or use an unconventional hole punch to make a hole. Thread the hole of a safety pin through the brad and into the spinner hole; separate the prongs on the back. Voila.

How to Play

Players take turns drawing cards and placing them on their game board, saying out load, "Parenthesis go first," "Multiplication follows Exponents," etc. If a player already has the card they've just drawn, it goes into a discard pile. If the player draws a SPIN card, they must flick the spinner and follow the directions it points to when it stops moving.

If necessary, you may need to reuse the discard pile. The first player to completely fill their game board wins.

VARIATIONS: Have players try to get TWO cards of each kind on their game board to extend play. When our game was "over," my son was having so much fun he suggested we keep playing this way.

Adding and Subtracting Positive & Negative Numbers with a Zipper Bag

What can you do with a gallon-size zipper plastic food storage bag? Believe it or not, you can practice adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers!

This can be mighty confusing for kids and rather than worksheet them to death, why not grab a bag, and play a little game?

My son and I had lots of fun with this and played for quite some time.

What You Need
A plastic gallon-size zipper food storage bag for each player
PDF of number line and die (download free from Google Drive here)
die
heavyweight card stock to print the PDF on
Scissors
Glue
fine-tip permanent black marker

Preparation
Print as many copies of the first page of the PDF as you have players. Trim each end so it just fits into our zipper bag. 

With the marker, make a small line in the center of the bag's zipper pull.

Print the page with the die onto another sheet of heavyweight card stock. Trim the two dice templates, fold, and glue (I use a hot glue gun).

How to Play
Players should place the zipper pull with the mark lining up with the zero. This is where everyone starts. Player 1 rolls all three dice (the add/subtract, the -/+, and the number die). This will tell the player what their equation is. For example if they roll ADD, negative (-), and four, they will need to solve the problem

0 + -4 =

They'll then move their zipper slider to -4. 

Now it's the next player's turn to roll the dice, solve the equation, and move the slider on their own bag.

The first player to reach either end of the timeline (i.e. 19 or -19) first is the winner.

Need a refresher on how to solve these equations? Check out Khan Academy's great online tutorial here.

Mars Math: Out-of-this-World Word Problems

Space exploration is fascinating. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. If you don't believe me, read up on future manned missions to Mars. It will blow your mind!

To bring science and math together, I made my son a book of word problems that test his subtraction, coordinate mapping, decimals, and multiplication skills. All the problems are related to Mars and future space exploration there.

The problems are a companion to an incredible book by Pascal Lee. It's been awhile since our 9-year-old loved a non-fiction book this much. His eyes were popping and his jaw was dropping and I couldn't stop him from interrupting storytime with our youngest because the facts were simply mind-boggling. I'd HIGHLY recommend you get a copy of Mission: Mars for any space-loving kid!

The book contains 9 pages of word problems, some that truly challenged my son who struggled with multiplying decimals (where's that decimal point go, Mom?). He was determined, though, and despite using a calculator for a few, he was beyond excited to get confirmation that his answers were right.

Here are a few of the problems you'll find in this free download.

Because of low gravity, you can leap 2.6 times higher on Mars than on Earth. If you jumped 3 feet on Earth, how many inches would that be on Mars?

Using radio signals to communicate with Earth, crew members will have to get used to a time delay. If there is a 22-minute delay between each comment, how long would the following conversation take.

"Hello, son!"

"Hi, Mom!"

"How's Mars?"

"It's dusty here. I miss you and Dad."

"We miss you too, son."

"Take care. We'll talk to you again soon."

"Okay. Bye!"

Calculate the AREA (length x width) of Valles Marineris, the giant crack on Mars. It's 2,500 miles (4,000 km) long and 120 miles (200 km) wide.

Get the PDF from Google Drive here.

Missing Sign Math Game

My oldest son's mastery of most of his multiplication facts and his understanding of division make it the perfect time to mix all types of math sentences together for a fun game.

To download the game I made, click here. The 6-page PDF includes a 2-page game board and four pages of missing sign math problem cards.

Print, trim the game board, and tape together. Cut and shuffle the cards.

Find a few game pieces to use. My son chose his mini football players. Anything will work such as two different coins, buttons, or poker chips.

As I was shuffling the cards, a neighbor boy rang the doorbell to play. I explained we were playing a math game and his eyes lit up. I invited him in and my son and his buddy played on a team against me. 

(I have a pretty strict policy against posting pictures of other children on my blog without a parent's permission, so you'll just have to trust me that this was a riot!)

Our two game pieces were placed on the board before the first square (in the upper left corner). The boys drew a card from the deck and determined which math sign was missing (plus, minus, division, or times sign). If their answer was right, they moved their game piece to that sign on the board. The game card was placed in a discard pile.

Now it was my turn to do the same.  The boys and I took turns until we both neared the finish.

In order to win, I had to draw an addition problem (the last sign on the board). As soon as I did, I was the victor. The boys had so much fun playing, they didn't even care that they'd lost.

Nothing like practicing good sportsmanship AND your math skills at the same time! 

Mean, Median, Mode, & Range Game

When I saw a few questions on my son's Everyday Math homework about median, I was psyched.

Creating a game to practice calculating mean, median, mode, and range was a snap. And, boy oh boy, was it fun to play!

Kids practice SO many skills with these calculations - ordering numbers for median, addition and division for mean, and subtraction for range!

Before we got started, we reviewed how to calculate each. He read the following rhyme that I'd found on Pinterest (genius, isn't it?!):

Hey, diddle diddle,

the median’s in the middle;

you add and divide for the mean.

The mode is the one that appears the most,

and the range is the difference between.

Prep

You can print our game here. The 4-page PDF contains 3 sets of numbered cards (1-10), a spinner to make, and a scorecard.

To make the spinner, I printed the template onto a piece of sticker paper. (Don't have any? Use a glue stick instead.) I stuck it to the brown side of a recycled cardboard cereal box. Then I cut it out, punched a hole in the middle of the spinner and the arrow, threaded a brad through both and loosely (so it spins freely) separated the prongs on the brad at the back of the spinner.

I printed 6 sets of numbered cards (2 copies of the two pages in the PDF) onto heavyweight cardstock; truthfully, I only needed five sets, but since I'd designed the layout to feature 3 sets on two pages, printing extra was inevitable.

Want to save some printer ink? Forego this download and grab a deck of cards. Use aces as 1s, and eliminate the kings, queens, jacks, and jokers. Instead of a spinner, decide which you'll calculate for each round (mean, median, etc.) and use scratch paper for score keeping!

Play

I dealt five piles of five cards each face down in front of my son and I (i.e. we both had 25 cards in front of us in five even piles).

For each round, we took turns flicking the arrow on the spinner. Next, we turned the cards on top of each of our piles over. If the arrow pointed to mean, we each figured out the mean (he used a calculator).

We checked the box on our scorecard to indicate that Round 1 was mean, wrote down our two scores (the number resulting from our calculations), and removed the cards from our piles, setting them aside, so we could prepare for Round 2.

After five rounds of play, we totaled our scores. The player with the highest number wins!

Word/Number/Game/Song/Food of the Week {Poster}

Can you tell I had trouble figuring out what to call this?

It's really just a poster.

But I hope this little poster gets my son's brain whirring all summer long. It introduces a new word, song, game, and food every week and works on a few basic math skills too.

I plan to laminate it and put it on the refrigerator with a fine-tip dry-erase marker. My oldest son can help write out the definition for the word of the week, solve the math problems, and fill in many of the other blanks, too.

Here's what I have in store for my son during week 1.

Word: Flabbergast

Number: 200

Game: Batter's Up Baseball (a free online computer game)

Song: Pop Fly by Justin Roberts

Food: Cranberries (dried)

I picked a few baseball-related items since my oldest son just began his summer baseball league. And I'm excited to introduce new foods to our whole family this summer since we'll be participating in community supported agriculture (our first weekly box of herbs and veggies will be ready for pick-up in a week or two!).

Download your own copy of this poster here. Print on legal paper.

CREDIT: This idea was inspired by the Shoopdedoop's Today's Number is… activity. Check it out here.

Top 10 Favorite Math Activities of 2012

My son loves math ... almost as much as chicken nuggets. Here's a recap of some of our favorite math activities from this past year.

No.1    Fridge Football

My son and I have played this so much, he has all the answers to the subtraction problems memorized! This simple game is a great drill for subtraction problems and counting by twos! Instructions and a free printable game board and playing cards are here.

No. 2    Math Post-It Note Scavenger Hunt

Practicing math facts has never been so fun. Send kids around the house (or school) answering one math problem at a time. Solve the problems right and a prize is yours! Cheap, easy, and gets their brains and bodies moving! Instructions here.

No. 3    Driveway Dice Roll Game

Turn your driveway into a giant board game where the kids are the game pieces. With a tissue box cube turned die, kids will roll, add, and subtract their way to the finish. Instructions here.

No. 4    Geometry Jump

Print geometric shaped game pieces out on colored cardstock. Get kids "swimming," dancing, and hopping from one shape to a parallelogram, trapezoid, even number, or the answer to 12 plus 13 (for example). This game is perfect for kinesthetic learners and practices a ton of different math skills in one game. Free printables and instructions here.

No. 5    Miniature Multiplication Ring Toss

What can you do with a small square of styrofoam, some popsicle sticks and a few plastic drink rings? Practice multiplication, of course! This fun ring toss turns learning multiplication facts into a game! Instructions and a free multiplication table printable here.

No. 6    Post-It Page Marker Math

Match the math problems to the answer and add hair to child's head, fur to a lion's mane, and quills to a hedgehog using Post-It page markers! Free printables here. 

No. 7    DIY Balancing Scale

Kids can learn about measuring, weight, and balance with a hanger, some yarn, and a few plastic cups. Don't underestimate the enjoyment that can come from such a simple activity! Instructions here.

No. 8    Fraction Match Card Game

This simple game is a modified version of "Go Fish." Kids will have a blast matching up colored shapes, pies, and numeral representations of fractions to see who can match up all their cards first! Free printable game, instructions, and book recommendation here.

No. 9    Round Around (Rounding Single Digits Board Game)

Round up or round down, move forward and back around the game board until the first player to the finish wins. Don't be overly confident! Players close to the finish are often sent backwards by rounding down. That's what makes this game great for adults to play with kids; you never know who'll win! Get this great printable and instructions here.

No. 10    Scrambled Schedule

Uh oh! A schedule of the day's activities is a scrambled mess! Kids put it in order, acting out each of the activities before finding the next one. This active time-telling game will get kids doing somersaults, jumping jacks, and dancing. Free printable and directions here.

Weather Tracking with a DIY Thermometer Slide

This activity came to me in the wee hours of the morning after lumbering out of bed to let the dog outside; I laid there unable to sleep at daybreak on a Saturday. The reason?

This thermometer. Once the idea popped into my head, I was afraid I'd forget it. <YAWN> 

This activity is simple and requires few supplies:

Red paint or markers

2 empty chipboard paper towel tubes

1 piece of sticker paper (or regular office paper and glue)

An Exacto craft knife

Glue

Printable 1-page "Was the Meteorologist Right?" PDF (choose Fahrenheit or Celsius)

Printable 1-page thermometer PDF (download the one I made here)

For five days, my son and I watched the meteorologists' prediction in the morning over breakfast. What would the high temperature be today? 

When it was shared, my son promptly moved the red "mercury" in his DIY thermometer slide to that number and wrote down the respective degrees on his recording sheet.

Later that day, (sometimes after school via Weather.com or over dinner as we watched the 5:00 news) my son recorded the ACTUAL high temperature of the day, once again moving his thermometer slide. Now he figured out the difference between the predicted high and actual high, using subtraction. This number was also written down. Now all that was left to do for the day was determine how well our meteorologist did, by checking the appropriate box.

less than (<) 4 degrees difference = Excellent Job

4-6 degrees difference = Fair Job

more than (>) 6 degrees difference = Poor Job

We did this each day for five days straight. Our recording sheet revealed that three of the five days our meteorologist did a fair job and twice, the predictions were excellent; the last day it was only one degree off! My son was amazed.

When the five days were over, my son asked if I could print another recording sheet so he could keep on recording the weather predictions' accuracy. He truly enjoyed this.

We read some great books as part of this activity. Check them out!

How to Make a Thermometer Slide

Flatten your paper towel tubes. Cut one along one of the vertical creases you just made; open it and apply white glue to the inside. Fold it shut again and place under a stack of heavy books until it starts to dry closed. (photo 1)

Print the thermometer onto a sheet of sticker paper. Cut it to a width that will fit on the flattened tube. Peel the paper backing off the sticker paper and stick it down. Place something inside the tube (I used an old plastic ruler) to keep from cutting all the way through the tube and use the Exacto craft knife to cut out the mercury part of the thermometer (photo 2). Use a piece of the leftover sticker paper to line the inside of your thermometer.

Now trim the flattened and glued tube so it's skinny enough to fit inside the thermometer snugly but still slides easily (photo 3). Paint it red (photo 4). Once dry, slide it inside (photo 5). It's ready to use!

Collecting Eggs (Making Subtraction Sentences)

At my son’s first trimester parent-teacher conference, among the few things my son could use a little extra practice on were math sentences. Huh? When I was in school those were called word problems. Well, now that I’ve dated myself, I’ll get on with it.

Here’s a fun way to practice that I made for my son. This will likely be the only time my son does “farm chores!”

WARNING! If you or anyone in your family uses a 7-day pill box, PLEASE make an adaptation of this game using small bowls, a modified egg carton, etc. No one in my home uses these to dispense medication; if we did, I certainly would not encourage my child to “play” with them as we’ve done here.

To make the game, I printed hen (and one rooster) stickers on sticker paper. I cut them out and added them to the lids of two 7-day pill boxes. Make sure that neither of the “chicken coops” has any of the same hens repeated.

Now fill the boxes with beads (aka eggs) of assorted colors and sizes. The seven-slot coop that has the rooster sticker should have less than seven beads in each slot. (REMEMBER: The rooster does not lay eggs; his slot should be empty.) The other coop must have more than seven beads in each slot.

Then, peel the sticker paper and adhere the hens/rooster wheel to a piece of chipboard (think empty cereal box) for sturdiness and cut it out. Poke a small hole in the center, thread a small paperclip onto a brad, and thread the brad through the hole, separating its “legs” at the back of the wheel. Make sure the paperclip spins freely; it’s your arrow.

Finally, print the Collecting Eggs worksheet and sharpen a pencil.

Download a 2-page PDF of the stickers, wheel, and worksheet here.

It’s time for your son/daughter to sharpen their math skills.

To complete the worksheet, your child will spin the paperclip twice. The first time, he/she will count the eggs in the first coop (the one without the rooster) that are under the hen the paperclip lands on. Spin again, and count the eggs in the second coop for the hen that the paperclip points to. Now answer the question. How many more eggs did the first hen lay than the second?

Keep spinning, keep counting, and keep making subtraction sentences!

Want a great hen-and-egg-themed book to read with this activity? Check out Dora’s Eggs. We loved it!

Upcycled Marble Roll Game (Math Facts Fun)

If you use FINISH® Quantum® dishwashing tablets, chances are good that you have 90 percent of the materials you need to make a fun marble roll game for your kids.

This sweet little game is so adaptable. You can practice tons of math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc.), or simply ask kids to try and slowly tip the board to roll the marble from one odd number to the next, getting the marble from the top to the bottom row. This is fun at home and great for the car, too!

We played Shake-ah, Shake-ah Subtraction with our upcycled marble roll game.

How to Make an Upcycled Marble Roll Game

Simply save ALL the plastic packaging from FINISH Quantum next time you buy it. You need the plastic grid cover that holds the tablets in place and the “bowl” they sit in.

Remove all the cardboard and sticky glue (I used Goo Gone). Now download the numbers I made, print onto sticker paper, cut out, and peel-and-stick to each rectangle between the ridges of the plastic plate. Note: The ridges should be sticking up around the border of each number. I put the numbers in random order.

Glue a thin strip of craft foam around the interior of the bowl about a 3/4 inch up from the bottom (I used spray glue). Make sure the space is deep enough to allow a marble to roll around freely.

Now place a marble in the bowl and the numbered grid cover on top (numbers facing down). The edges should rest on the craft foam border you added inside the bowl. REMEMBER: The marble and the numbers should be INSIDE the bowl.

On the back of the game, run a thin bead of hot glue around the perimeter to secure the numbered grid so it doesn’t slip out. Let dry.

Shake-ah, Shake-ah Subtraction Instructions

Player 1 shakes the game board, muttering “shake-ah, shake-ah STOP.” He/she pays attention to where the marble stops. This is one number in their subtraction problem. One more “shake-ah, shake-ah STOP” and the player now has two numbers. The smaller number is subtracted from the bigger number and the difference is the score.

Play alternates between players for any number of rounds. The player with the highest score wins!

Does Your Child Speak Subtraction?

Before my son and I got shakin’ and played with our upcycled game, we reviewed some subtraction vocabulary by reading Loreen Leedy’s Subtraction Action. I love her characters and my son loves solving the problems sprinkled throughout the book. (It’s especially entertaining when you read aloud and give Mrs. Prime a crazy accent!)

Stairway Subtraction

My son was bouncing a ball off of the stairs the other day when I had a little epiphany. I whipped up some labels with numbers, printed them on sticker paper, and this little activity was born.

What You Need

A small ball

Number labels for the stairway

Paper and pencil for scorekeeping

How to Play

Stand at the bottom of the stairs and toss a small ball (ours was a hacky sack) up the steps. Pay attention to the step it lands on first.

Keep Score

Each round, write the number of the step that the player’s ball lands off first (e.g. stair No. 20). Then, from that number subtract the number of the step (e.g. stair No. 17) where the ball stops. The answer to the subtraction problem (e.g. 20 - 17 =) is the player’s score (3) for that round. 

If the player tosses a ball and it stays on one step, the answer is zero (e.g. 18 - 18 = 0). Play five to 10 rounds. Add the rounds together for the player’s final score.

How to Win

The player with the smallest score wins.

We played twice. I wish this blog had audio so you could have heard the hoots and hollers we both made as we had good (and especially bad) tosses.

Math can be fun. My son has taught me that.

Baseball Math Match-Up

My son’s baseball team is mid-way through the season and with each practice, I see a love of the game growing with all the boys on the team. It’s exciting to witness such enthusiasm, see their understanding of the game grow, and skills improve.

When I conceptualized this activity, I asked my son which sport (baseball, basketball, soccer, or football) he wanted to “play.”

“Baseball,” he said without hesitation. Of course.

I designed a page of four pinstripe baseball jerseys and printed three of the pages onto cardstock. Then I trimmed two of the pages so they were slightly narrower than the third (I wanted to be able to tape the three pages together so the two outer pages of the game board could be folded in on the middle page).

I laminated the pages, along with 12 cut-outs of baseballs. (Download a PDF of the jerseys and baseballs here.)

With the baseballs cut out, I attached velco dots to the back of each and the game board, beneath each jersey. I also taped the game board together, using clear tape on the back to “hinge” the jersey pages, putting the widest page in the middle.

Now, all that was left to do was write the players’ numbers on the jerseys and corresponding math problems on the baseballs (e.g. player 12 would be matched with the ball marked 19-7).

It was up to my son to solve the math problem and place the ball under the jersey with the answer.

Three wrong answers (i.e. “strikes”) and the game was over. Every three problems he answered correctly (i.e. “balls”), he was given a small piece of candy (I used Smarties).

This game was a home run!