If you have a child who is in the midst of 2nd grade math, one of the most important things you can do is keep math practice fun. What better way to have some fun than to spend some time in the kitchen? These 2nd grade math games will help you cook up some fun with your child.
1. Math Fact Graham Crackers
Before you start cooking dinner, give your kids a tasty snack that can also double as a math lesson. Take full-size graham crackers and turn them into flash cards. Write simple addition and subtraction facts on the crackers with frosting. Before your kids can eat the snack, they have to solve the problem. You can add a cooking element to this by allowing the kids to write on the answers themselves.
2. 3-D Shapes
Get some geometry practice in using pretzel sticks and marshmallows or gumdrops. Have your child make cubes, pyramids and other three-dimensional shapes using the pretzel sticks as the sides and the candy as the corners. You can also make two-dimensional shapes to practice by making flat designs on the plate. When you are done, eat your geometric creations together, or serve them to the rest of the family as dessert.
3. Cook Up Some Place Value
While it’s technically not cooking, these kind of 2nd grade math games are a fun way to use food to practice place value. Make a chart with a space for hundreds, tens and ones places. Then, tell your child that cheerios are the ones, pretzel sticks are the tens and Chex squares are the hundreds. Give your child nine of the cheerios, nine pretzel sticks and a handful of Chex. Then, call out numbers and have your child show them on the chart using the food. So, for 325, your child would have three Chex in the hundreds space, two pretzels in the tens space and five Cheerios in the ones space. You can even practice adding numbers and carrying with this activity.
4. Sequencing Games
Sequences and patterns are an important part of 2nd grade math, and you can make up 2nd grade math games like this while cooking. Set out an assortment of measuring cups and spoons, and ask your child to order them from smallest to biggest, or vice versa. Then, as you are cooking, you can ask for the “third cup” in the row, giving your child practice with ordinal numbers as well.
For additional practice with 2nd grade math concepts, consider investing in a tablet-based tutoring program. With a program like Thinkster Math, your child can be in the kitchen with you getting detailed help from certified teachers while you cook dinner. Add a few cooking math games to the mix and you have the ideal way to enforce 2nd grade math concepts, even during those busy hours when you are cooking.
