Games Are Great For Basic Facts

Maths Games are an awesome way to learn our basic facts.  Today we had a go at the games listed on our blog.  These are some of our favourites. 

Justus and Courtney especially liked Ghost Blasters to practice number bonds. 
Sylvia, Kassia and Lashana especially liked Swimming Otters because they could compete against each other using multiplication. 
Capri and Cameron especially liked Tutpup because is was a fun way to practice multiplication and adding. 
Kayla liked Memory on because you got good at remembering where the shapes were pretty quickly. 

We had lots of fun and felt pretty good when we improved our score and awesome when we won a game.

The Nifty Nine Times Table

Today we explored how amazing the 9x tables are.
We discovered how to use our fingers to do our 9x tables:

Put your hands in front of you and spread out your fingers.
For 9 x 3 bend your third finger down. (9 x 4 would be the fourth finger etc...)
The fingers to the left of the folded finger are the tens ie: 2 fingers are 2 tens = 20
The fingers to the right of the folded finger are the ones ie: 7 fingers are 7 ones = 7
So the answer is 27.

The 9 x Table
1 × 9 =  9

2 x 9 = 18

3 x 9 = 27

4 x 9 = 36

5 x 9 = 45

6 x 9 = 54

7 x 9 = 63

8 x 9 = 72

9 x 9 = 81

10x 9 =90

 

Look at the answers on the right-hand side of the table above. Notice how the tens go up

but the ones go down.

All the digits in the 9 × table add up to 9.

18 = 1 + 8 = 9

27 = 2 + 7 = 9

36 = 3 + 6 = 9

Look at the pattern to the right: the ones column goes down one at a time and the tens column goes up.  You can see how the 9 x table reverses itself!

(1 × 9) 09 ~ 90 (10 × 9)

(2 × 9) 18 ~ 81 (9 × 9)

(3 × 9) 27 ~ 72 (8 × 9)

(4 × 9) 36 ~ 63 (7 × 9)

(5 × 9) 45 ~ 54 (6 × 9)

(6 × 9) 54 ~ 45 (5 × 9)

(7 × 9) 63 ~ 36 (4 × 9)

(8 × 9) 72 ~ 27 (3 × 9)

(9 × 9) 81 ~ 18 (2 × 9)

(10 × 9) 90 ~ 09 (1 × 9)

You can see the pattern the

9 x table makes on the 100's board 

We were amazed at how easy the 9 x are to learn once we discovered the patterns the numbers make.

Number Bonds

Number Bonds are number partners that add up to 10.  They are tidy numbers.  We used hand shapes to show number bonds because we have 10 fingers.  We can also show number bonds on the abacus. (Justus, Sylvia, Brayden and Kirsty)

Card Games are Great for Maths

A pack of cards can be very useful for learning maths knowledge and strategies.  Here is a picture of us playing Number Bond Fish.  Number bonds are pairs of numbers that make 10 eg: 5+5, 3+7, 2+8 ...
We have to try and get pairs of cards that add up to 10.

There are lots of ideas for games on the internet.  Just Google maths card games for kids.  Any good ones we find we will put a link on our blog.  If you find any good ones please let us know.

So Far So Good

The Porritt Maths Blasters have been very busy solving problems using multiplication strategies.
We have learnt that mathematicians love tidy numbers like 10 and that we like to solve problems as quickly and as easily as possible.

Our two favourite strategies we have been practising are using doubles to count groups of numbers quickly and using 2's,3's, 5's and 10's times tables to help solve problems quickly.  This means lots of basic facts practise.