Want to make learning math fun and creative when the kids just want to “be done?”
Sometimes we need to practice and build math concepts just a bit more. It can be hard to find ways to get the extra practice in when the kids really just are over practicing math (again and again!)
The baby wants held, the green beans are boiling over on the stove, and the other kids are dumping bins of puzzles all over the living room. But, the second grader needs to practice regrouping triple digits just a bit more.
Outer Space Math Maze
My four year old and I made up this 3D Outer Space maze to practice re-grouping tens and hundreds columns in three digit numbers one day while my second grader was at school. When she came home from school, she was all over it!
Mazes are a great way to practice skills needed in handwriting and math. They are a puzzle for hand-eye coordination and a visual motor workout. Often times, kids have trouble aligning numbers in columns of ones, tens, and hundreds. A maze using hand-eye coordination like this one can help to work on that copying skill.
Materials you’ll need to make the Outer Space Maze:
(Affiliate links are included in this list and in this post.)
Black cardstock
Colored cardstock
pencil
Wikki Stix
Marble
Black marker
Plastic bin (or any pan with an edge. A metal cake pan
would work well.)
Make a 3D Outer Space Maze
onto the orbits and over the planets. Try to get them to stick right through the center of each planet. Then, use the Black marker
to write three digit numbers on both sides of the planets. Place the paper into a bin with edges and move a marble along the 3D track.
So, hopefully this idea will help your hands-on learner. Have fun playing and learning math…until the beans boil over!
The second grade blogger team have created hands-on learning activities with an Outer Space theme. See what they’ve been up to:
