Freebie Friday - Bubble Math: Learn To Add Fast

Being able to add quickly in your head is an essential skill not only for more advanced math but also in daily life.  Think about going shopping and being able to add prices in your head quickly to make sure you don't go over budget.  Or think about adding measurements together quickly when you're building something.  Bubble math is an easy way to gain the skill of adding quickly.  You can download the Bubble math packet as a PDF (numbers 1-12) HERE for free and print it off.  If you want to share this resource, please share the link to this blog post.

Inside the bubble math packet are instructions and tips for the teacher on how to do the exercises.  When using these bubbles for addition practice, the student is trying to get to the number in the left bubble.  In the example to the left the number the student is trying to get to is 10.  They are given the number 4 in the top right bubble, and need to fill in the blank bubble with a number that when added to 4 equals 10.  In our example the student fills in the number 6, because 6+4=10.  The student asks himself, 4 plus what number equals 10?

You can also use this packet for subtraction practice by reversing the above process.  For subtraction practice the student would ask himself: 10 minus what number equals 4 and fill in the blank.

Homeschool Math - Free Printable Graph Paper

 

Need graph paper to demonstrate a concept?  Or maybe your kids need graph paper for schoolwork.  Math-Aids has really nice free, printable PDF graph paper of all kinds, and the cool thing is that you can customize the size of the grids before printing.  You can see some of the kinds of graph paper they offer below.  They also have other math worksheets, but I'm most excited about the graph paper, which we've already used a number of times.  I know we'll be back time and again to print more, and I really wanted to share this free resource with you.

I hope you find this resource useful.  If you know of other free math or homeschool resources, let us know in a comment below so we can share them with everyone.

At home education resources for homeschoolers.

Freebie Friday - Fun Addition and Multiplication Drills

Who says math has to be boring?  Today I have another freebie for you.  This time it's addition and multiplication drills.  You can print the PDF HERE.  

The idea is simple, print the page you want to practice, write the operation being practiced in the square box in the center (addition or multiplication), and then have the child perform the operation on the number in the center of the flower with one of it's petals and write the answer in the outer petal.

In the PDF there is a title page, an instructional page with examples and tips and tricks to make this exercise fun and interesting, and four pages of flower drills.  In the center of the flowers the numbers go from 1-12 and there are two flowers per number.  For each center number (1-12) there are the numbers 0-13 to practice with in the petals, with special emphasis on the numbers 7 and 9 which students often have trouble with.

Freebie Friday - Character Trait Badges Printable

One of the things I want to do this year is encourage my daughter in a fun way to learn certain desirable character traits.  I want to do new ones each year with her.  My daughter loves Pokemon so I thought to make it fun for her, we'd take a 'Pokemon' approach to this.  In Pokemon the kids go around collecting badges from different Pokemon gyms, and these badges afford them the privilege of competing in the Pokemon League when they get enough of them.  So I made eight character trait badges for my daughter to earn for first grade.  I expect her to earn some fairly quickly and some will probably take her all year.

Freebie Friday - Trace Worksheets

It's Friday the 13th, but instead of something awful happening I thought I'd give you a freebie to brighten your day!  Check it out.  I'd made a PDF some time ago of tracer worksheets (letters, numbers, words) for my Kindergartener to trace.  The great thing about these is that you can either print them out and they can use crayon, pencil or marker, OR you can laminate them and use them with a dry erase marker as we did.  I suggest if you laminate them to use a thicker paper when you print, print double sided, and then you have a two sided worksheet and get to save on paper and space.