Family Math is Fun
January 2017
Happy New Year! We hope you have enjoyed our monthly math fun activities. To kick off
the new year, we present you with some additional family math challenges across four grade
bands: Kindergarten; 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6.
We continue to challenge you to do the math as a family, encourage you to notice math in your
daily life, and make math come alive for your children.
Enjoy our January edition of Family Math is Fun!
~Georgia Austin, Dena Cacchiotti, and Lori Martensen
GO ONTO NEXT PAGE
Family Math is Fun: Toying with Math
~ Georgia Austin, Dena Cacchiotti, and Lori Martensen
January is the perfect month to think about how children’s toys and games provide so many
opportunities for math fun. As children play with their toys and games, they can count, compare
numbers, look for patterns, discover coordinate planes, and explore fractions and ratios.
Kindergarten: Apps on the iPad
Nathan’s teacher has 4 Math apps, 3 Language apps, 2 Handwriting apps, and the Raz-kid app
on her iPad. How many apps does Nathan’s teacher have in all? Draw a picture to show your
thinking.
Write an equation to match your picture.
_______ + _______ + _______ + _______ = _______
How many more Language apps does she have than Handwriting?
If Nathan’s teacher downloads 4 more apps, how many apps will she have altogether?
Grades 1 & 2: Playing with Matchbox Cars
During indoor recess Luke and Mary decide to play with Matchbox cars. Luke gets 15 cars
from his backpack and Mary gets cars from a box in the classroom. When Luke and Mary
count their cars, they have 23 altogether. How many cars did Mary use from the box?
If all the cars have 4 wheels, how many total wheels are there?
How much larger is the number of wheels than the number of cars?
Grades 3 & 4: Building with Geometric Blocks
Trevor and Michaela love to build towers with blocks. During indoor recess, they decided to
create a pattern fence around their tower. Michaela got the box containing 100 geometric
blocks. The pattern for the fence was: cube, cube, cylinder, cube, cube, cylinder.
What shape will the 8th block be? The 13th block? The 27th block?
Can you use the pattern to predict the 50th block and the 100th block?
Before recess ended, Trevor and Michaela used 100 geometric blocks to complete their fence
pattern. Of the 100 blocks that they used, how many of them were cylinders?
Grades 5 & 6: Who has more trucks?
Drake and Grant love to play with their construction trucks. Three-fourths of Drake’s
!
construction trucks are dump trucks, and of Grant’s construction trucks are dump trucks.
Drake learned that
#
$
"
!
is greater than . Drake insists that he has more dump trucks than Grant.
#
"
!
Is Drake correct that is greater than ? Contruct an argument using words, numbers, and
$
"
pictures to prove your answer is correct.
If Drake has 8 construction trucks and Grant has 20 construction trucks, is Drake correct that
he has more dump trucks? Explain your thinking.