Does your kid say they hate math? Do you find it hard to teach math in a fun and engaging way? Are you and your children bored by daily math drills? 

Have no fear! We asked our Mother of Divine Grace Consultants for their ideas for ways to make math fun, and they delivered! Here are their suggestions:

(Please note that the resources in this list are personal recommendations for supplemental materials. They are not part of the MODG Curriculum.)

• I love shiny new pennies as a counter. They are pretty to look at and only cost $1 for 100!
• We used to do "candy math." With little candies of different colors, we did patterns, addition and subtraction with the littles. (Subtraction was always the favorite, of course!) We even managed candy math in high school, when we figured the volume and surface area of a triangular prism by using a Toblerone bar!
• We love math games to reinforce math facts. Some family favorites have been Zeus on the Loose and the math games from RightStart Math.
• Tie the math problems in with a favorite theme. Insert dinosaurs or bunny rabbits or whatever the child loves into the problems.
• Use favorite small toys as manipulatives - for my daughter, it was Polly Pockets. For the boys, math often featured small animal figures. 
• Incorporate favorite literary characters into the lesson. We got a lot of mileage out of "helping out" Johnnie Inkslinger the amazing bookkeeper from Paul Bunyan Swings His Axe by Dell J. McCormick.
• I like to use a deck of cards to work on facts. It is much more interesting than doing endless fact sheets, and there are so many different possibilities. For example, turn two cards over and add them or multiply them. Or you can turn over one card at a time and multiply each card by a certain number, such as 5. Or turn one card over and add a certain number as you go through the deck. You can also turn two cards over and subtract them. And on and on. You can time the student as well and encourage him to improve his time.
• We have one of these new sensory games. You roll dice, add them up, then “pop” the bubbles. For a fun twist I roll the dice for my daughter’s turn, and she rolls the dice for my turn. She’s getting really quick at adding!
• Giant Step - After instruction with the math lesson, Mom/Teacher sits at one end of the room (holding math answer books) with the children on the other (with their math books/worksheets). The children solve their problems and call out their answers. If correct, they take one giant step forward. If incorrect, the mother (or older sibling) helps the child to correct the problem. They get to take a ½ step forward once the problem is correct. The first child to mom gets a prize.
• Bean Bag Toss in a Bucket - Earn a certain number of tosses for every problem answered correctly.
• Math in a Tent - Drape a blanket over chairs or a table. Sit in the tent with flashlights. If the child solves the problem correctly, have a “light show” on the ceiling to celebrate.
• Functional Math - Cooking activities (e.g., Pizza for fractions, M & Ms, peanuts, or cereal, etc. to teach skip counting on a 100’s chart), simple experiments, playing store or bank with real or play money.
• In the early years, use wrap-ups to practice math facts, use colored math bears for all kinds of math problems, or play “memory” with math facts (eg. Index cards with problems on some, answers on the other, all turned face down, and the student turns over any two. If they are a match, he keeps the pair.)
• In the later years, proficiency yields enjoyment. One of my daughters slogged through piano for seven years considering it mostly drudgery until one day she was able to play original compositions, and suddenly she loved piano. It was still hard, but she enjoyed it, and she does to this day in adulthood. I think it is the same with math. Build proficiency with the math facts so that computations are easy. Take your time to understand fractions in the middle years so that handling fractions later in Algebra is easier. Do not be afraid to slow down to gain mastery. It will make math more enjoyable in the future, when the power of it is revealed in the types of problems one can solve.
• It is very helpful and encouraging if you have college aged kids taking math who can explain to their middle school and high school siblings exactly how the math they are studying will be used in college-level math and potentially a future career.
• For little people who have a hard time staying focused I found that doing the lesson with them helped make it fun. We would put the book between us and ‘race’, it was comradely, and also helped the child see that if you just did one problem after another, the whole lesson would go a lot faster!
• We tried changing up the drills we were doing to something different every day: flash cards one day, Calculadder one day, wrap ups one day, and a computer program one day.
• These are a few websites that I suggest when I tutor math: MathsBot.com - Tools for Maths Teachers, Virtual Manipulatives | Mathematical Modelling, PhET: Free online physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math simulations, Paint the Squares - Interactive Number Charts, and Visnos Maths Free Interactive Teaching Resources and Lesson Starters
• With my younger ones, floor time math was enjoyed by all. I had classroom-sized 100's & 200's charts and a Mickey Mouse pointer finger. We used them to practice counting by 1's, 2’s, 5’s, 10's and so on. I think this gave them more than counting skills. They could see the big picture of how numbers are ordered to each other. They also had a visual representation of the proportion of numbers, such as how the fives are spaced from each other. It was valuable, fun time for us.
• We enjoyed playing the game Speed! from Highhill Education while learning multiplication facts. 
• For young and old, working out problems on windows and mirrors with dry erase markers can be fun. For particularly difficult math facts, I write the math facts all around the house on different windows, and then they have to both find the problems and answer them. That one is also good for children who need to move!
• I liked to incorporate board games when someone was struggling with things like money or fractions: Money Bags A Coin Value Game, Pizza Fraction Fun Game, Make a Pie Learn Fractions Game 

Thank you to our consultants for sharing all these great ideas! For more information about enrollment in Mother of Divine Grace School and our consultations, read about our Teacher Review Program.