The easiest way to learn anything is to make the topic or activity relevant to life. The same is true for math. If teachers clearly demonstrate the relevancy of math to everyday life, students can more easily see the purpose of learning and embracing the subject. But before teachers make math relevant, they will need to overcome one more…

In this article, the author relates how she designed a math activity she called Beads to use in conjunction with their school's 100th day celebration. Beads has provided her kindergarten class with many opportunities to practice a variety of math skills - counting, patterning, sorting, comparing, making sets, predicting, identifying numerals,…

A hundreds chart is a simple 10 x 10 grid with the numbers 1-100. Here, the author discusses several activities for different grade levels using the hundreds chart. The activities are: (1) Chart tour (Grades K-2); (2) Mystery number (Grades 1-3); (3) Missing numbers (Grades 1-3); (4) Multiple patterns (Grades 3-5); and (5) Least common multiples…

Mathematics truly is magical, especially for students with strong number sense and algebra skills. This paper describes a variety of mathematical surprises that will capture students' interest and motivate exploration of mathematical ideas. While the tricks themselves are fascinating, push students to think about the reasons why these stunning…

Teaching K-8 is published eight times during the school year. Every issue of Teaching K-8 staff visits every school for there cover story, complete with pictures to provide a window into the life of school. Every issue has a curriculum focus with 3-5 features, written by classroom teachers, with detail lessons and best practice for using…

Negative numbers extend our number line and greatly simplify our calculations, but sometimes students struggle with the concepts. These fun activities will help kids to make sense of the "other half" of our number system.