Making Math Fun
As a lot of you already know, I began homeschooling my children this year. In fact, we actually started playing around with some things this summer (before the regular school year starts) to try to figure out exactly where the kids were at academically and emotionally.
It didn’t take very long to figure out where their real weak spots were… Math.
The funny thing is that they’re all actually pretty good at math - they just hate sitting down and doing the work… and nobody does their best learning when they’ve decided that they hate the subject.
So I started getting creative…
That’s when I really started going out and looking for games and activities that would help them learn the concepts that they needed to learn while making it really fun for them… but I quickly ran into a huge obstacle.
Price.
Have you seen how much those math games cost? I actually spent $30 for one award winning board game that would help the kids learn to add, subtract, and make change. It’s a great game that I highly recommend, but it’s $30!!!
You can’t afford too many games like that, no matter how great they are, to help your children learn math concepts, gain confidence, and become more proficient in math.
So then I started looking at free resources.
Most of what I found was more full of advertising than good learning and practice. In fact, most of what I found wasn’t really that good or kept my children’s attention anyway. Most of it was junk.
Then I happened upon a great resource.
It’s called Making Math More Fun, and it’s a collection of printable math games. Well, I took a chance and purchased it for my kids last week and guess what?
They have absolutely loved every activity that we’ve done from the collection so far!!!
My son has gone from telling that he “absolutely hates math” to asking me every day if we can play a math game. I was absolutely amazed!
The other thing is that all three of my kids can do these activities even though their ages and abilities are different. There are some things that appeal to my youngest, some that work well for my oldest, and other things that they can all do together… without me having to sit right there and walk them through every step for the whole game (My favorite part… they can play independently sometimes!)
Okay… at the risk of sounding like a commercial I’m going to stop telling you how great this math game collection is.
After all, I don’t even know for sure how many of you out there are in the same boat as I am — either homeschooling kids who don’t enjoy math or even just looking for math supplements for your kids.
But if you’re looking for some easy to use, fun, inexpensive, and educational math games for your kids, than I can highly recommend the Making Math More Fun game collection.
In the meantime, if you know of some other great math resources to make math more fun for kids, then I hope you let me know!
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2 Responses to “Making Math Fun”
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Great Coupons!
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I am a teacher, and a resource I loved was put out by “Box Cars and One Eyed Jacks”. They have many books with lots of differen math games using dice and cards. I have taught many of these games to my students, and they always want to play more. We often used them with our “buddy” classes, and I always enjoyed watching my younger students teaching the games to their older buddies. I also enjoyed watching children learn from each other as they played the games together. What better way to learn than by having fun! (http://www.boxcarsandoneeyedjacks.com/)
They’re a little expensive, but they look really fun and educational. Will these games work in a homeschool environment, or are they just for classrooms?