In this guest post Shelly and her kids try five fun maths practice worksheets from Activity Village that show practising maths doesn't have to boring!
Trying Out Five Maths Practice Worksheets
By Shelly
I am determined that my kids are not going to be scared or nervous of maths so we try really hard to do hands-on maths and maths games. But we also acknowledge that maths practice is important. The more my two practise basic sums, the more confident they get. So we try and find fun ways for them to practise maths (dice games are brilliant) and we try to find worksheets that are not just standard lines of sums, but rather sums in a slightly more creative format. So I thought I would share our five favourite fun maths practice worksheets from Activity Village.
1. Colourful Addition Worksheets
Find the Colouring Addition Worksheets here.
We have used these pages quite a bit with my youngest. Although the instructions say you need to colour in the balloons to match the colour of the answer, we have come up with a few variations on this: we have used colourful stickers, dot markers, circled the sums in the correct colour, linked the balloons with the same answer to each other and even used stamps.
Colouring the correct balloons (left) and using dot stickers (right)
Circling the correct sums on balloons with coloured pens rather than colouring them in
2. Maths Facts Colouring Pages
Find the Maths Facts Colouring Pages here.
"Colour by Sum" pages are often popular with younger kids and my son far prefers colouring in a picture of any animal to doing row after row of sums (even if he is colouring the animal in based on the answer of the sums inside the picture). Last year I always kept a few colour by sum pages printed out in his pile of pages and he would often sit down and complete one without me even having to ask. We have also made some colour by maths fact pages into paint by maths fact pages which both my kids LOVED.
Snake maths fact colouring page, completed
3. Pyramid Puzzles
Find the Pyramid Puzzles here
My daughter likes these pages. There are three different levels so you can start with easier sums and then work up. It is basic addition practice – add the numbers in the two circles to get the answer above it - but it also has a slight variation where the kids have to work backwards and work out what the numbers of the circles below an answer could be. I like really like this about these pages.
Working on a page of Pyramid Puzzles
4. Arithmagon Challenges
Find Arithmagons here.
These are similar to the Pyramid Puzzles, but here the kids need to find the answers that go in the circles at each corner of the triangle. Again they are straightforward addition practice. But you can also extend the activity slightly. We have drawn a bigger triangle around the original and then added an extra step: for example, to "double each answer", "halve the answer" or "multiply the original numbers by 2 and then add them together".
Tackling a page of Arithmagon Challenges
5. Sum Hunt Pages
Find the first set of Addition Challenge pages, up to 10, here.
Activity Village calls these Addition Challenges. My kids call them Sum Hunts! We only just spotted these on the website and we love the idea. The kids need to find sums, much like a word search. It really gets them thinking and my youngest loved the challenge, he said it was by far the best maths page he has ever been given. I was actually thinking that I might suggest to my two that they try and make their own sum hunt page.
Enjoying a sum hunt!
This is a guest post from Shelly. Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 6 and 9. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on their different learning activities including lots of hands-on maths, arts and crafts and anything else that is part of their home educating lifestyle.
You can find more guest posts by Shelly, and a list of all our guest posts, here.
