 Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallach Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be a homeschool show and tell. The homeschool show and tell is an open collaboration hosted by Abby from Rooted and Rest and Myself. Our goal with the homeschool show and tell was to bring homeschoolers together from around the world to really show that there wasn't one right way to homeschool. And we do that by selecting different topics each month and everybody sharing their personal take on it. So this month's topic is going to be making math fun. So I'm hoping that you are gonna get tons of ideas for how to make math more fun in your homeschool. All you'll need to do is check out the playlist in the description box down below to watch all of this month's videos. So I am going to be sharing with you a few simple ways that we make math more fun in our homeschool and then a few of our favorite resources for each. So hopefully you will leave this video with some ideas and some real things and steps that you can do to make math more fun in your homeschool starting today. The first thing that we do to make math more fun is by using living books. I've always found that Emily is just an auditory learner and so anything that is book-based that's listening has always, always been a huge plus for her. So some of our favorites for living math and helping her kind of see how math works in the real world with a story-based are the Life of Fred books. We have the entire elementary series and these are perfect. We read them before bed most of the time. We don't always have her do the written portion but we'll answer the things out loud. We absolutely love the circumference series. These are really, really fun picture books that cover a ton of different math topics. So they're just fun stories to read that will also help teach your kids in a fun way. And then a few of our other series that we really like are the Real World Math. So this takes math and applies it to real world. And then the Journey Through Math. Again, this is very real world. So you're getting kind of a hands-on look at different skills, different skills that are needed for each of the different topics. So for instance, I love using these with our unit studies. So like here we have the math journey through space. While we're learning about space, this is a great way to sneak in some extra math in addition to other things and just expose her to new topics. I also really, really like the Bedtime Math series. We have all of the books. We've done them multiple times. But now I just use the Bedtime Math on my phone because they email it to me every day. So if you don't wanna buy the books, that's a really great way to still do the Bedtime Math. It's story-based and it has three different levels of math questions that you can ask after that story. And you can just get it for you can sign up and they'll send it to your email every single day. So that's like a really awesome, fun, free thing you can do. It works in really nice to morning time, Bedtime, whenever you have a spare second, you can do it at lunch every day. It's just a really quick, easy way to get in a little bit of extra math. It's a little bit more fun. The second way that we like to make math more fun is by using things that can be hands-on. So especially if you have a tactile learner, these are vital in your homeschool. A few of our favorite ways to do that are with the power pin or hot dots, depending on whether you're getting it from Lakeshore Learning or Amazon. And there are a ton of different math cards. You can get them on almost every different concept. And it's just a fun way to make sure that they're, and they can also visually see whether they get it right or not. So let me actually find the answer. So it's got reinforcement. It's a great way to make it hands-on so that they're doing it. And you guys, these are just multiplication questions. I mean, it's essentially just multiplication worksheet. You're just doing it in a different way that makes it more hands-on and fun for your kids. I mean, you could easily say, okay, most worksheets have 10, so do 10 of these and call it a day. And they probably had a lot more fun doing it too. We also really, really like these wrap ups. These are perfect for car schooling. They're perfect for on the go. They're small, they're convenient. It has multiple different things in one. They have them for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I believe they also have them for fractions too. But it's another hands-on way to kind of practice some of those math skills. And it's, again, you can have them do all of their times one tables on this one wrap up and they've done, you know, the same thing they would have done on a worksheet. It's just been a little bit more fun for them. Another thing that we really, really like are these Melissa and Doug facts. So you move the little thing here to see what multiplication times table you're doing and then you flip it up to see the answer and you can see that it changes as this rolls. And they have these too in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We have all of them. It's just a fun way to practice those math facts and without it being, you know, on a worksheet with pen and paper and not that that's a bad thing, but sometimes you just want to change it up. You want to do something a little bit different. Along those same lines are the as worn a lift the flat books. These are so much fun and they're so colorful and there's so many interactive things that they can flip in them. And it's just a really great way for the kids to be hands-on with math. And what's really fantastic is there's so many different topics. I mean, you can have times tables, you have fractions and decimals and they have things like measuring things, telling time, adding and subtracting. They have shapes. They have, I mean, almost every math skill you can think of they have some sort of look inside or lift the flat four. So it makes it fun to say, okay, you know what? We're going to be doing times tables for the next six weeks. Let's instead of introducing it with a boring lesson let's just spend a day or two going through one of these books and having fun together. And it just again makes it hands-on. And the last hands-on thing I have that we really like is the multiplication slam from Educational Insights. So they have other math slams that aren't just multiplication. We've had all of them. This one has gotten the most use because multiplication is what she's needed the most help with. But it's just these fun math slams. You turn it on, you select which game you want to play and you're kind of racing to try to find the answers. Again, it just makes it hands-on and a little bit more fun than pen and paper. The third way that we make math more fun in our homeschool is with games. Obviously you guys knew that was going to be one of them. And I'm going to be honest with you, picking games to show you is so hard. Like I tell people all the time I can literally pick a favorite child because I have one, picking a favorite game is difficult. So instead I picked our most played games at least in the last six to eight months because I don't know how else to do it. So these are our most played math games the ones that have brought us the most joy in the past six to eight months. First and foremost will always and forever be Yahtzee. I know you guys hear me talk about this all the time. It's probably just because it happens to be Kevin's absolute favorite game that it gets a ton of play at our house. But it also is sentimental. My grandmother is who taught me how to play it. Emily learned her addition and subtraction math facts because of it. It's just one of those things that it's just gonna be around forever, you guys. And it's cheap. I mean, you can literally get Yahtzee for less than $10. You can get it used from a thrift store or Black Friday for under five. It's a simple dice rolling game, but I promise you the sneaky map in this game is like unreal. It is so, so good that it's worth the five to $10. And I think that's probably the third one we've owned because we keep losing them or running out of dice or whatever. But it really, really is a fantastic game. Another one that gets a ton of play because it's one of my favorites is Quirkle. And the reason I love this one is because especially when you have younger kids, there is no reading required. So your kids don't have to know how to read or even write for that matter to be able to play it. So your youngest kids can join in. So we were playing this one from the time Emily was really young because she didn't need to know how to read. It is just shapes and colors, but you can get more advanced, you know, with your gameplay a little bit and how you're doing it, right? So you can make it easier for your kids saying like, oh, here we put all the reds together. And then as they're getting older and older, you can step up your game and make it a little bit more challenging as far as like how you're laying them and how critical you wanna be. It's just a really great game. Prime Climb is another one that's become a huge favorite. I like Prime Climb because it is one of the few. Actually, I have one other one to show you today, but there's not very many games that do all of the math operations. There's very few, like less than 10, that do all four math operations and Prime Climb is one of them. And I love it for that because you kind of get to make your own math problem and you can do it with any of the four operations. So it really has you thinking outside of the box and kind of like letting you be your own math expert. The other game that is very similar that does all of the math operations but is a little bit more affordable and it takes up a little bit less space because honestly the Prime Climb box is very big is as money. So it allows you to do all four operations. It's a little bit smaller, a little bit more affordable. So if that's what you're looking for then this would be another really, really good one to add to your collection. And then two other ones that we use a ton because they're a lot of fun and they happen to teach math skills as well is Racco. You're trying to put your cards in order from least to greatest. They don't have to be like sequential. They just have to be least to greatest and you're trading your cards out as you go and you're making estimations. But it's a really great way to start trying to figure out. Okay, how much number of gaps do I want to have here when you're trying to teach place value when you're teaching lesser than greater than. There's so many math skills in this one. And then obviously you have scoring and points also. And then another one of mine and Emily's favorite is Blockus. I have the Duo one because me and Emily almost always play just the two of us and we found the four player one to be a little cumbersome to try to remember which color went first and who was who and it was just frustrating. So we actually got rid of the original Blockus and just play the Duo now because it's always just two of us playing either me and Kevin or me and her or her and Kevin. The three of, even with three players is still just a little bit weird. So both games equally amazing. It just depends on whether you want two people to play or four people or the ability to have four people to play but awesome, awesome game. Amazing for spatial visualization and just all of it. It's just really fun. And again, I have a TED talk that I will link if I can find it for you. It talks about the relation of logic games to like algebraic thinking for math. So we love those logic type games. The ones that kind of stretch you the ones that really make you think because they're gonna be so beneficial to those higher level math later on in our homeschool and that it's worth it to be playing them now. The fourth way that we make math fun in our homeschool is by using technology. I know this isn't for everybody, but we love math apps. I mean, they're just like some of our favorites. They're perfect for if you're on the car, if you're on the go, if you're in a waiting room, if you just need something really quick. Days when mom's not feeling so good and you just need something to get by. So some of our favorite math apps are extra math which is not like the most fancy app but it gets the job done and it's fun and it's fast. And Emily likes it a whole lot better than pen and paper. So extra math is number one. I love all of the dragon box apps. DuckDuckMoose if you have younger kids is fantastic. Squeebles is another really good one. Monster math and then Prodigy is a really good one too. That's more computer than it is app. You can do it on both, but that's a really fun one too. And it's free. So those are some of the top most used math apps that we've loved probably the most over the years. And then obviously teaching textbooks because it is something that she can do on the go. She can do it on her tablet. She's really, really enjoyed it. She likes the fun side of it, that it's a little bit more interactive and that somebody other than me teaching her and that she can choose her buddy and her background and all of that. So while that's technically a curriculum, it definitely still falls under the more fun for her. She enjoys it more than most other things. And then the last way that we make math fun is just by incorporating it into our everyday life. So we try to make sure that she sees us doing math and that she knows that it's not always cumbersome, that it can be fun, that sometimes you have to do it to know the area that you wanna lay patio stones, but then that means you get a pool at the end of it or baking a pie, getting in the kitchen, doing kitchen math, doing real world math, money math when you're at the store, allowance. We can just all of these things that are real world but also very applicable to her, so it makes it more fun because it's not just this, you know, concept that is on paper that means nothing to her. So we try to bring math in the real world as much as possible. Make sure that we're bringing it up, make sure that we're pointing it out. I mean, not to the point that we're overdoing it, but you know, if we're in the kitchen and we're cutting something like, hey, we're cutting it in half, let's cut it into four pieces, what would that be? Fourths, okay, you know, we took one away, so what's left? Three fourths and just things like that, just mentioning it, bringing it up, pointing it out, doing as much as possible and involving her in as much as possible. Like when Kevin was doing, you know, the volume of the pool or the area and perimeter of our patio, even when she was young and we thought that was kind of above her head, we sold it and just ignore it. I mean, it was an opportunity. It was there, we could do it. So we still showed her how to do it. We didn't expect her to have it mastered, but we knew that it was something that we had, you know, exposed her to and at least the next time it came up, she would know what we was talking about. You know, she would know, you know, oh yeah, I remember one was the outside and one was the inside or we did something times something, you know, just so that she had been exposed to it and she kind of knew what it was. So we tried to make sure that we're doing that as well. So those are my five tips for making my fun, as well as some of my top resources. Now I'm gonna put a few blog posts in the description box for you because I have two blog posts for mastering math facts, one for addition and subtraction and one for multiplication and division. I have math games blog posts and I also just did a blog post about how to homeschool math without a curriculum. So I'm gonna leave all of those in the description box for you in case you want even more resources for how to make math more fun in your homeschool. But I would also love to hear what your favorite resources are. What do you use to make math more fun in your homeschool because I'm always looking to add to our collection.