Skills Tested: Early Multiplication, Subitizing

Materials Needed: printable cards

Directions: flip through cards one by one. Ask student: how many dots are there? Prompt student to think of addition in terms of groups, to connect towards multiplication.

Example video of the cards in action: https://vimeo.com/324813802

Credit: Graham Fletcher

Skills tested: thinking in equal-sized groups.

Materials needed:   36 identical coins or markers.  Recording sheet, available here.

Directions:

1.        Show students 36 markers or identical coins.  Tell them that these represent 36 crackers. 

2.        Tell them to work with a partner to figure out how many how many children can share the crackers equally and how many crackers each child will get. Have the students record their answers on the sheet.

3.        When they are finished, ask if they have found all the solutions?  (They should find all pairs of numbers that have 36 as a product.)

4.        Ask, do they notice any patterns?

5.        Ask, what is division?

Skills tested: using groups of objects to count a large collection.

Materials needed:   Image of many dice (available here ), paper or white boards and markers.

Directions:

1.        Show students the image of the dice.  Tell them that they will work with a partner to develop ways to count all the dots on the dice.   

2.        Roll a large collection of dice on the table – at least 12 dice.

3.        Ask pairs of students to discuss possible strategies and to write them down.  If students want to count the dots one-by-one, ask them if they can find better ways.  Emphasize that there might be many ways to count the number of dots.

4.        Ask them if they can move the dice, would that make the problem easier?

5.        Ask them to name their strategies.   If they want to add up the dots on all of dice showing 4, for example 4 + 4 + 4, ask them if they could be called skip counting or multiplication?

6.        Ask them if some strategies are better than others?

Skills Tested: Early Multiplication, Factoring

Materials Needed: Rolling thunder directions here 

Directions: roll two standard dice (1–6).  Ask students: we have (3) groups of (4) – how many altogether?

Guide students through different ways of counting the groups, encouraging them to "skip" count (4, 8, 12) rather than count by ones (1,2,3,4,...,12).  Have students record their work.

Credit: Antonia Cameron.

Skills Tested: Multiplication Facts, Factoring

Materials Needed: create worksheet here, pen or pencil

Directions: Generate and print your custom worksheet. You may consider making some worksheets of varying difficulty.

Show your student how problems are embedded in the puzzle. Then, have them find as many problems as they can. Guide the student through the troubleshooting process, e.g., "does 4 x 2 = 9? what ways are there to figure this out?"

Credit: WorksheetWorks.com

Skills Tested: Division and Factoring within 10

Materials Needed: deck of cards, remove jokers and face cards (Jack, Queen, King)

Directions: similar to "Go Fish".  Changes: look for pairs of cards that divide each other ("division pairs"), always draw instead of asking others for cards.

Deal 4 cards to each player; reserve rest for draw pile.

In each player turn: take 1 card from draw pile into hand. Do any two cards divide each other?  If yes, player may discard one such pair, then turn passes to next player.  If no, turn immediately passes to next player.

Player who discards entire hand first wins.

Player can choose to keep a division pair for later play; they are not required to discard promptly.

Some discussion prompts for teacher at http://www.cuppacocoa.com/math-game-divide-and-conquer/

Credit: Cuppacocoa

Skills Tested: Multiplication Facts, Factoring

Materials Needed: create worksheet here, pen or pencil

Directions: generate and print a custom worksheet.

Make up or generate a sequence of random numbers within 100 or so (e.g., using dice or cards). For each number, ask the children to look for all factors on their bingo boards.

Works best if students are comfortable with multiplication within 100.

Credit: Tuan Nguyen (source code).

Skills Tested: Addition and Subtraction

Materials Needed: A white board (available at reading team), 3 students

Directions: Ask two students to sit in chairs back to back. Each of them will write a number on a board, but since they are back to back they will not be able to see the other person's number. A third student then looks at the two student's numbers and adds them together. The third student shares the sum and then the remaining students will have to use that information to figure out what number their partner had.