how our unschooled kid learned multiplication tables though games and play

As a parent, I’ve got this really rad perspective of elementary learning and the skills that come with it. Like your parenting evolves with every child, our ideologies on education have evolved too. Though we incorporated play and learning into our practice at-home, the main focus was flash cards, memorization and drills.

building math skills: skip counting

Skip counting is simply learned through games and play. Once the concept has been introduced, you can add practice into so many different games.

• Skip-scotch
  Similar to hopscotch, with a bit of set-up - create a large format grid on the pavement or using masking tape indoors with the numbers one to one hundred. Choose a number and hop to the next on the board. For example, if you’re counting by threes, hop from three to six, to nine and so-on. The first to choose the correct numbers and hop to the end (we practice until the tenth number) is the winner of the game.

• Fall-ball
  This one comes with a thrilling twist. Instead of tossing a ball and skip counting the chosen number on your turn - if someone drops the ball during the round, everyone starts over. Very thrilling if you’re near the end of the round when the pressure is on, this one had my kids practicing skip counting intensively without even realizing. It was one of the most effective games that we’ve used. For a challenge mode, try to speed up the game in a speed round - and for longer attention spans, start with skip counting by twos, and try to make it all the way until twelve.

• Stair climber
  having the numbers that we’re learning front and centre is an effective way that our kids have learned to skip count. When we’re learning a new set of numbers, I’ll tape the set to the stairs - encouraging them to count up every time they go up the stairs and count down or backwards, every time they go down the stairs.

In addition to having the numbers listed somewhere like the stairs, we’ve taken a note from our Dutch friend who share how Dutch bathrooms will often have calendars with the birthdays of family members - and so now, we've listed the

math games to practice multiplication

• Playing Cards Math Wars
  For this one, all you need is a deck of cards. Deal two cards to each player. The goal is to multiply the cards together, and the person with the higher value wins the cards. It’s an iteration of War with an element that usually keeps the kids engaged for a couple of rounds! Before you get started, remove the face cards from the deck - and consider using two decks of cards to create more variation in the equations being created with the cards.

• Dice Race
  Each player uses two dice and rolls the dice together. They multiply the numbers of each roll and the product becomes their score. The first player to get to 100 is the winner.

• ‘I went to the Shop and I Bought’…
  This game is effective because it includes a storytelling element. If the kids are becoming disengaged, you can create outlandish stories. You can play with two or more people. With two people, the first person would say “I went to the shop and I bought three bags of five snakes?. The second person would solve for the product and respond “You bought fifteen snakes?” and then create their own story. “I went to the store and I bought four bags of seven cats” - the first person, or the next person in the circle responding with the answer in the form of “You bought twenty-eight cats!?” and so on around the circle, or back to their partner.