Around two and a half years ago when my daughter was learning her basic CVC words we made one of those basic CVC word books – there are lots of them on Pinterest. You basically buy a cheap flip notebook, cut the pages into three strips and write the letters on the different sections (with vowels in the middle). The kids then get to play around with the different sections and create words. It was a great basic word activity.
So last week when we were revising some of her times tables I suddenly thought what about making her a multiplication booklet. Exact same concept but instead of letters we use numbers.
We made it the same way. We cut the pages of a small notebook into three sections. On the first section you write the number 0 to 12 with a x, on the second section you write the number 0 to 12 with a = sign and on the last section all the possible answers.
Very simple and a more hands on way for her to practice some multiplication sums. She liked the fact that she could create her own sums and then find her own answers – she was in control. And Big Bonus for me – doing it this way she actually ended up practicing more multiplication sums that she would if she was given a worksheet.
I have now learnt that when one kid gets a fun learning aid the other generally asks for their own equivalent. So I made little man an addition booklet.
Same concept as his sisters but as he is only starting to work on his addition sums I also included some round sticker dots for each number. This was so that he could check his answers himself (ie the dots on the one side of the equals sign need to be the same as the number of dots on the other sign of the equals sign.) With his sticker dots I also organised them in rows of 5 as I wanted to re-enforce the idea that 10 is 2 groups of 5 or that 7 is 5 plus 2 etc. (And for the A6 spiral notebook that I used the rows of 5 also fit in very nicely on the strips of paper.)
Very simple and cheap to make (we bought the A6 notebooks from Tesco for 50p each). The dot stickers where some that I already had in the house but I have a feeling I also orginally bought them from Tesco at some stage.
ofamily learning together 