And, chances are, whether they are in 1st grade and are working on addition and subtraction, or they are older and are memorizing multiplication and division facts, you hear a lot of grumbling when you get out the flashcards.

Stop the grumbling and get them excited to learn with these fun ways to practice math facts at home.

It’s amazing the difference a few simple math games can make.  

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I remember doing speed drills in elementary school and flipping through flash cards at home.   

Educational games for kids, like these games to practice math facts, make learning those facts much more fun, which means less stress for both of you.  

When your child gets to double digit math, check out this trick for teaching double digit addition and subtraction. 

Fun Ways to Practice Math Facts 

Baseball Math — This printable game makes working on multiplication facts fun.  Your child can play it solo or with a friend.  

Nerf  Gun Math —  Turn your child’s love for Nerf guns into a fun learning experience they’ll ask to do again and again.  

Math Checkers — Love checkers?  Print out your own checker board that’s designed to work on multiplication facts. 

Chutes & Ladders with a Twist — Playing board games as a family is always fun.  With one simple twist you can use a classic board game to sneak in some addition and subtraction facts practice.   

Beach Ball Math — Get ’em up and moving while they learn.  A game of catch is all it takes for kids to have a ball with math facts.

Multiplication Facts Search —  Just like a word search, only for math!   These are perfect for kids in 3rd grade and up.  

Classic Kids Card Games — Discover how you can use 2 classic kids card games to help your child master those math facts.  

Hammer in the Math Facts —  Hammering nails is always a fun activity for kids.  Turn that activity into a fun way to practice math facts with this idea.  You can easily substitute a thick piece of Styrofoam for the pumpkin.

15 in a Row —  Turn those flashcards into a fun game you’ll both enjoy.  

Cootie Catcher Math Practice — Do you remember making paper fortune tellers (some called them cootie catchers) as a child?  Your child will have fun using these folded papers to work on math skills.  

Math Fact Dominoes — Create your own craft stick math dominoes for your child to use to work on those basic math problems.  

Math Races — Make flashcards more fun with this kinesthetic math activity.  

Dice Math — Have a collection of dice at home?  Use them in this fun dice game to practice math facts. 

Egg Carton Math — Recycle that empty egg carton into a fun way for your child to work on addition or subtraction skills. 

Math Fact Islands —  Do your kids love hopping and jumping?  Get their wiggles out while they work on those basic math skills. 

Math Facts Zap! — Have you ever heard of Zap?  (Sometimes people call it Kaboom or Snap.)  It’s a super easy game that kids can play alone or against a friend.  How many math facts can you get correctly before you get the Zap?  

Math Building Cards — This is a fun STEM activity for kids that’s perfect for working on math as well as engineering skills. 

Matching Hearts Math — Make your own memory game to work on those math skills.  This version is done with hearts, but you could use other shapes or plain note cards as well.  

Plastic Egg Math Hunt — Those colorful eggs aren’t just for candy.  This math facts activity idea is perfect for kids of all ages.    

Math Facts Bingo — Everyone loves Bingo!  Print out these addition and subtraction bingo cards to make learning more fun.  

Who says working on math has to be boring?

Try some of thes fun ways to practice math facts at home. 

You may also enjoy these math ideas:

• Hands-On Fractions Activities 
• Kinesthetic Math Activities
• Simple Activity for Measuring Volume

Games to Practice Math Facts

The post Fun Ways to Practice Math Facts at Home first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

The plastic bricks are not only fun to build with, but Legos are perfect for hands-on learning that your child will love.  In fact, you can use them for some fun sentence building activities at home and at school.  

Lego Sentence Building is a fun way to teach kids about sentence structure and the parts of speech.  

For more fun ways to teach parts of speech, check out our sticky notes parts of speech activity. 

When you mix a child’s interests with what they are learning, it’s a win-win situation for everybody.

Using blocks to teach sentence structure makes learning fun.  You may also like our printable silly sentence activity.

Lego Sentence Building

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For this Learning with Legos activity, you need:

• Legos  (I used the larger Duplo-sized Legos so I could write our words a bit larger.)
• Masking Tape
• Black Permanent Marker

Cut the masking tape to fit each block, and then use a marker to write one word per block.  

(I’ve also heard you can write directly on your blocks and clean the permanent marker off with hand sanitizer, but we weren’t ready to try that.)

You can color-code your words to help students quickly identify each different part of speech.  

For example: 

• Write all your nouns on yellow blocks.
• Write verbs on blue blocks.
• Use a marker to write the articles “a” and “the” on green.
• Write other adjectives (descriptive words) on red blocks. 

Choose nouns that your child will recognize and be excited to use.  

If you have an animal lover, you might use several types of animals (dog, monkey, horse).  You can also use names of family members.

For best results, choose verbs that can be immediately followed by a direct object (or another noun).  For instance, “hit,” and “saw” can be followed by a the direct object “ball” in the sentences:  “I hit the ball.”    “The dog saw the ball.”  

To make it easier for you to recreate this activity at home, here are the verbs we used:  hit, kissed, cooked, ate, threw, and sees.  

For older children you could use another color block for prepositions (on, under, over, behind…) and have your child make even longer sentences.    “The dog saw the ball under the bed.”  

(Teaching contraction words?  Check out this simple contractions activity.)

Sentence Building Activity

Once you have your blocks ready, it’s time to build sentences with Legos.

For younger children you may need to tell them which color block they need to use as they build their sentence.  

This is a great opportunity to introduce the different parts of speech.  

For example in the sentence pictured above I asked them to place the blocks in this order: green, yellow, blue, green, red, and yellow.  We paused to talk about how the yellow blocks were all nouns (person, place, thing, or idea) and the blue blocks were all action verbs.

For an older child you might challenge them to build a sentence without telling them which order the colors should go in.  Instead you could challenge them to find a noun or a verb as they create their sentence.

After a while you can take learning about sentence structure a step further.

 Once your child has created their sentence, have them write it out, making sure to use correct capitalization and end punctuation.

You can also use the Legos to help practice reading fluency.  

Build your own sentence using the blocks and ask your child to read it to you.  The sillier the sentence, the better!

This simple Lego learning activity not only teaches sentence structure but also introduces the parts of speech.  

If your house is littered with Legos, put those colorful bricks to good use with this Lego Sentence Building Activity.  

You may also like:

• Roll a Sentence Activity from This Reading Mama
• Subtraction Squish
• Hands-On Learning for Double Digit Math

Originally published January 16, 2015.

The post Learning with Legos: Sentence Building Activity first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

Flashcards are boring.  But there are fun ways to practice math facts with the kids.

Since kids love treasure hunts, we decided to mix math facts and hunting into a few St. Patrick’s Day math activities. 

One of our favorites was this treasure hunt zap math game. 

It’s a fun way to practice math this March.

Learning becomes more fun when you use games for kids.  

Using the plastic coins and rainbow colored water beads turns this twist to the craft stick Zap! game into a fun St. Patrick’s Day math activity.

Your child will also love this Nerf gun math activity.

St. Patrick’s Day Math Activity

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Materials Needed:

• Water Beads
• Plastic Coins (Try gold coins!)
• Fine Tip Permanent Marker
• Shallow Plastic Container

Use the permanent marker to write a math fact on one side of each of the plastic coins.  This is the perfect opportunity to pick the math facts your child needs to focus on.

On one or two coins write the word “Zap!”

Spread the water beads into your shallow container.

Flip the coins upside down and hide them among the colored water balls.

Challenge your child to “hunt for the treasure.”

When they find a coin, they must solve the math problem correctly in order to keep it.  If they get the answer wrong, they have to put it back to try again later.  

How many can they find and solve before they pull a “zap” coin?

Zap Math Game

You can easily modify the activity to be used with 2-3 players.  

Have players sit around the container and take turns finding coins and answering the math facts.  

If they solve the problem correctly, they get to keep the coin.  If they pull a “zap” they must put all their coins back into the water beads.

Whoever has the most coins a the end of 5 minutes wins.

Looking for a way to make math fact practice at home fun?

Make your own St. Patrick’s Day Math Facts Zap Game and get ready to watch your child have fun while working on math.

You may also enjoy:

• Using Cootie Catchers to Practice Math Facts
• Math Fact Races
• Hands-On Activity to Explore Measurement and Volume
• ABCs & 123s: 40+ Hands-On Learning Activities for Letters and Numbers

Originally published March 6, 2017. 

The post Hidden Treasure Math Fact Zap Game first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

Kids love building things, and when you add in the chance to fling a bit of candy?  We are talking an instant hit!

Whether you are looking for a rainy day activity, awesome camp craft to do with scouts, or just something fun to do with your kids, this STEM activity is sure to be a hit.

Make your own craft stick catapults and let your child’s imagination soar.

Affiliate links have been used below. 

This is one kids STEM activity you will want to try!

For another craft stick STEM activity, try making your own balancing craft stick toy. 

Craft Stick Catapult

Materials Needed:

• Craft Sticks   (7 for each catapult)
• Plastic Spoons  (stronger spoons, like these, work best)
• Small Rubber Bands

To make future STEM projects at home easy, keep these most often used STEM supplies on hand.  

How to build a craft stick catapult:

• Stack 5 craft sticks on top of each other and secure both ends with a rubber band.  (We used some of the colorful loom bands that seem to be everywhere in our kitchen.)  This will be your crossbar.
• Next, stack 2 craft sticks on top of each other and secure one end with a rubber band.
• Carefully open up the 2 craft sticks and slide your stack of 5 in between them.
• Then lay a plastic spoon on top of the top craft stick and secure both ends of the spoon to the craft stick. (As shown in the picture above.)
• Finally, criss-cross one more rubber band around the area where the craft sticks intersect, holding it all in place.

Launching your craft stick catapult:

To launch your homemade catapult, simply hold one side of the crossbar while using one finger to push the spoon down and then — let go!

Extensions: 

Try experimenting with how many craft sticks you use for your catapult.  We tried using just 3 craft sticks for the crossbar (which caused the candy to not go as far).  We also found 7 craft sticks also didn’t work very well.

Try taking the criss-crossing rubber band off one catapult and moving the crossbar up on the catapult to see how it effects the distance.

You might also want to try using different candy pieces.   We found heavier ones didn’t fly as far, and smaller candy pieces flew further.

You could also use marshmallows, cotton balls, paper wads…  Let the kids have fun seeing what will fly the farthest!  We had a blast using marshmallow peeps in this catapult game.

You might find after a while that your child’s favorite toys get in on the action.

At our house the Imaginext knights had to join the fun, and soon it was a full-on attack on the castle!

We had fun learning about catapults, seeing what effect minor changes would have on our design.

You could easily use these fun craft stick catapults to talk about potential energy (when the spoon is held back) and kinetic energy.  

For older kids you could challenge them to design a different version of a catapult.

No matter what age, these craft stick catapults are definitely fun!

You may also like:

• Pumpkin Catapult 
• STEM Activity: Make a Paper Cup Phone
• STEM Activity:  Design a Boat that Floats
• How to Make a Pumpkin Pulley System 
• Make a Colorful Bracelet with Soda Straw Weaving 
• Engineer a Coffee Filter Parachute 

Originally posted November 11, 2014.

The post Simple Craft Stick Catapults first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

“I didn’t know grocery shopping could be so much fun!”  My son was standing in the produce department with the biggest smile on his face.  It had happened completely by accident.  I had originally brought the mini notebooks and pens, thinking the kids could use them to add up prices and work on real-life math while we were shopping.  But, when we entered the store I handed them the notebooks and gave them this simple activity that kept them smiling and having fun the entire grocery store trip.

(Related Post:  Make Your Mark: 30+ Projects to Encourage Your Child’s Love of Writing)

I never expected this activity to get them so excited.  What surprised me even more was that not only was my son having fun,  but he was having fun writing.  My son, who struggles with writing, who acts as if it is torture when he has to write his spelling words, was carefully writing in his notebook and smiling.

When we had entered the store I had sent them on a simple scavenger hunt.  I challenged them to find a fruit or vegetable they had never seen before, and they were having a blast, walking through the produce department and carefully copying down the names of each new item.

I thought they’d each write one or two items down while I picked up what we needed, and then they’d be ready to continue shopping.  Boy, was I wrong!  They continued to scan the produce department, finding new items, and excitedly sharing them with me.   In fact, my daughter couldn’t wait to share her list with Daddy when he came home that night.

Like I mentioned earlier, I originally thought we’d use the notebooks to do some math work, but they were having so much fun on their impromptu scavenger hunt that I let them continue.  Their eyes carefully scanned each aisle we went down.  Not only that, but they continued to write down new items they found the entire trip.

Want to take this a step further?  Let your kids pick one new item from their list to take home and try.  What a great way to get them excited about trying new fruits and vegetables!

“Mommy, can we do this again?”  My son was clutching his precious notebook as I pushed the cart to the car.  I couldn’t help but smile as I looked down to see his face.  I never thought such a simple, no-prep activity would get them so excited about grocery shopping.  And, yes, we will be doing it again.

You may also like:

• How to Write Found Poetry — Fun Way to Teach Kids Poetry Writing 
• 15 Fun Ways to Practice Sight Words at Home 
• Games to Keep Them Learning This Summer 

The post Simple Way to Keep Kids Entertained and Learning at the Grocery Store first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

This summer we’ve kept up our learning adventures with a few simple backyard nature studies.  This nature study is easy to set up and lets your scientists get hands-on with a simple worm observation.

We started our worm observation by building our very own, very simple wormery.  You can do this with any clear, plastic container.  We chose to use some clear plastic cups we had left from a birthday party; I’ve also seen people cut 2 liter plastic soda pop bottles.  The choice is yours.

The first step to creating your wormery is to fill your container with a mixture of soils.  We lifted a few rocks we usually find worms under and used some of the dirt there, layering it with a bit of sand.  I decided to let my kids do it completely themselves as part of the learning process, so you can’t really see the layers as nicely in the picture.  But the worms did’t really seem to mind.

To encourage the worms to build their tunnels towards the edge of the cup, where we could better see them, we put a piece of cardboard tube in the center of the cup, shoveling the dirt between the cardboard tube and the cup.

Then we put some damp leaves and grass on top and stuck our clear plastic cup inside a slightly larger solid-colored cup.  If you are using a pop bottle or something else to make your wormery, you can use black construction paper to cover the outside of the container.  The idea is to make it nice and dark and cozy to encourage your worms to dig those tunnels!

Finally, you need a few wiggly inhabitants.

Finding worms is usually easiest after a good rain.  Try looking under a few large rocks, in the flower bed, or even in the driveway if the rain has been pretty recent.  Hunting for worms is part of the fun!

Once you have several (the more you have, the better chance to see those tunnels), place them in the wormery between the cardboard tube and clear plastic cup.  Sprinkle the top of the soil with a bit of water, make sure you have the sides of the clear cup covered, and set it somewhere cool for a day or two.

It can be hard waiting when you’re little.  A few good books on earthworms is perfect to fill the time while you wait.  A few of our favorite books about earthworms that are good for preschool-aged and older are: Garden Wigglers: Earthworms in Your Backyard,   An Earthworm’s Life ,   and Wiggling Worms at Work.

After a couple days, it’s time to uncover the clear container and check out those tunnels!

We talked about what the worms had done.

I asked them to think about how worms help plants grow.  Kids love showing off what they know!  They couldn’t wait to remind me that we learned earthworms can help soften the soil.  And those tunnels?  They help air and water get to the plant roots easier.

Of course, you can’t have a worm observation without handling at least one worm!    This is definitely a favorite part for my kids.

We dumped our wormery out into a plastic container to check out the worms.

Did you know, if you hold an earthworm up in the sunlight you can see through them and check out what they’ve been eating?    (Our little worm wasn’t thrilled about getting his picture taken this way so he was a bit wiggly and turned out blurry, but I love how you can see that dark trail running through his intestine.)   The kids had a great time checking out the worms this way, and we were able to talk about some basic anatomy of the worms as well.

Worm observation is a super simple nature study that is perfect for spring or summer.  

Nature Study Series: 

• Simple Ant Observation
• Observing Tadpoles/Frogs
• Exploring Natural Clay
• Going on a Bug Hunt!

The post Nature Study: Worm Observation first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.