Misc. Activity Ideas

Miscellaneous Activities, Ideas and Teaching Tips
A collection of quick ideas and activities.

Special Numbers	Get the children to create number sentences to generate their own special numbers. For example they could use their date of birth to create their own special number, e.g. (Year) - (Day) + (Month) -> 88 - 26 + 5 = 67 How many different special numbers can they create by forming different number sentences using the same generator numbers. What other numbers can they think of in their life that have special significance? (e.g. house number, age they were when they went to Disneyland etc.) Can they use these to create special numbers? Lots of possible discussion points.
Diennes' Beans	Help your children get the idea of place value and multiplying by ten by treating your Diennes' blocks/base 10 equipment as though they were beans! Think about the idea of the unit block growing ten times bigger to become a ten. It does actually help because when you have a mixture of tens and units the children start to see the units becoming tens and the tens becoming hundreds easier.
Jump to the left...	When you're looking at place value get children from the class to come and stand up holding the digits of the number you're looking at (written on large sheets of paper). Stand each digit child either underneath [Th] [H] [T] [U] cards stuck to the wall or in front of other children on chairs holding the signs aloft. This works really well when you're looking at multiplying/dividing by ten/hundred etc. as the children can physically move to the left/right as needed. The empty gaps underneath the signs also help the children realise when you need to add a 0.