In this guest post Shelly writes about revising maths facts using printable maths cards from Activity Village.
Revising with Maths Cards
By Shelly
After having a bit of a break over the summer I always like to revise a few maths facts before we start learning new concepts. For my youngest I was wanted to revise doubling and halving and some of his times tables but we are not in “worksheet mode” so I thought cards would be better.
Although we have often using the times table folding cards as straight forward folding cards or matching cards, we really like matching the folding cards with the skip counting cards.
Matching folding cards to skip counting cards
This time I decided to convert the folding cards into times table dominoes and I opted to combine two times tables into a set. To start with I created a set with the 8 times and 6 times table cards (I chose these two as they were the newest times tables that he has learnt). I kept it very easy and just created simple card templates that were slightly the bigger than the existing folding cards and then split the folding cards so that the sum was on one domino and the answer was on the next domino.
Our simple home-made times tables dominoes
So in the photo above he started with the card with the sum 4x8 and then he needed to find the answer (32) and match the two together and then move onto the next sum, 6X6.
It was very easy to set up, with just some cutting and sticking, but it has worked well with both of my kids. They like the fact that they are not sitting still at a desk but actually get to move around a bit while they are revising.
Playing times tables dominoes
I have always found that whenever we have a go at maths dominoes my kids always end up practicing more sums than they would if I gave them a worksheet.
For his doubling and halving practice we initially cut the doubles folding cards apart and used them as matching cards.
Doubles cards in action as a matching activity
We started off by keeping the doubles flash cards and halves flash cards as separate sets, and then worked on one set at a time.
But after just a few goes he was naturally picking up the combinations – eg double 20 equals 40 and half of 80 is also 40 - so we started combining the sets together.
Combining the halves flash cards with the doubles flash cards
I think the two sets work really well together. By using both sets together it is very easy for the kids to pick up patterns – like the fact that the doubling cards only applies to every second halving card. Why? Because it only works with even numbers.
Using the doubles flash cards and halves flash cards together
When you combine the doubling and halving cards together the set is quite large but you can select specific number ranges to work on. I really like this set and am now busy turning our cards into doubling and halving dominoes.
This is a guest post from Shelly. Shelly is a home educating parent of two children aged 8 and 10. She blogs at ofamily learning together where she shares ideas on the different learning activities that they do including lots of hand-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.
