Math Fact Practice Ideas

Math Fact Practice


One of the best ways to help your 5th grader succeed is to make sure he or she has mastery of all of his or her math facts.  While flashcards are a traditional and useful method of practicing, there are a lot of other easy and fast ways to practice.  Here are a few tips:


  • Spend 5-10 minutes of oral math fact practice in the car, or as you walk, on the way to all the extracurricular activities you go to.  You don’t always just have to do facts.  Try skip counting by a number and see how high you can get in 5 minutes.


  • Use dice, dominoes, and playing cards to mix things up.  
    • With dice, have the student roll and add or multiply the numbers.  Try more than two die for a challenge.
    • Play a round of dominoes and add up each side or multiply the sides.  See who can get a mental sum of all of his or her dominoes first.
    • Using playing cards, play “War:  Each person turns over two cards and multiplies them. Whoever has the larger product (answer) wins.  For a bigger challenge, have each person put down 4 cards and make two, two-digit numbers to multiply.


  • Other board games have GREAT ways to do math, too:  make kids solve Monopoly transactions instead of using the calculator,keep a running tab of Sorry cards pulled, etc...


  • Use everyday math experiences to practice estimating and calculating with your child.  
    • Discuss about how much gas will cost as you are filling up the car.
    • Figure out about how much the produce, meat, or snack part of your grocery bill will be.
    • Get help with cooking.  Have students measure out parts of recipes in the liquid measuring cup marked with fractions.  Try to double or halve a recipe together.
    • Discuss how much all the gear and fees are for one sport or activity.
    • If you’re building, painting, putting in tile, or doing any other home projects have your child help measure and calculate area or perimeter.
    • When holidays or birthdays come around, have kids cut out ads from the paper to calculate present costs.




  • Sports are a GREAT opportunity for math!  Figure out baseball stats, find different combinations of regular shots and three-pointers a player could make to get to a total, how a fantasy football player earned your team points, or the sum of all the players’ jersey numbers.






  • Download math fact iPad or iPhone apps.  


  • You can find tons of online math games on the GRE website.  Go to “Student Information” and then “Useful Links”.  


MATH IS EVERYWHERE! Expose your kids to all the ways you use it as often as possible!