Friday Freebie-Multiplication Cut and Paste

Both kids had birthdays last weekend and then we had a week long visit from my dad/Grandpa Florida which meant my computer time was minimal. In fact, the last minute trip also jumped in the way of my plans to get the school year planning done early, so I had to whip out a quick cut and paste multiplication sheet to share. The rest of this weekend will be spent buried in planners and curriculum as I prepare for our Tuesday start date, so the next couple of Friday Freebies will be recommendation to handy freebie sites (worksheets and worksheet generators) while I get settled into our new year. For now though, you can grab the worksheet I made today
here.

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Friday Freebie-Subtraction Cut and Paste

This week has been a busy week with journeys into the woods, their weekly all vacation bible school, and a trip to the water park, so my blog time was nonexistent. As a result, my freebie this week is a short 2 page subtraction cut and paste activity that I finally uploaded this morning. I'm hoping that this week is a little more calm so that I have time to make some more curriculum, write some blog posts, and begin planning for our school year. The way summer is flying, I am wondering how much I can get done! You can grab your worksheets here.

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Math-Aids

Math-Aids is my go-to math site these days. We use Teaching Textbooks for our core math, so I use it mainly for practicing skills or review. If I decided to step away from TT, I could do a full year worth of math with this site alone, and it's free, not aligned to the common core standards, easy to use, and super customizable. You can select what type of worksheet to print and adjust the problems for skill level. For example, if I wanted to do multiplication drills, I can choose from standard worksheets or fill in times tables. I can select the range of numbers used or what percentage of the times table should be left blank. Fraction sheets can be visual or without pictures, color or black and white. There's even a spot to put a message on the bottom of the page, and I'd sometimes sneak little messages to the kids there. Overall, you could rely on this site for a comprehensive elementary level math curriculum.

Fact Families

When I saw my first fact families problems, I must admit that I had to google to understand what they were asking. Once I figured it out, I loved using these for my oldest when he was learning addition and then again for multiplication. I haven't needed them again until recently when my daughter started having a hard time memorizing her multiplication facts, so I created some for drills with her. I favor the visual triangle over the text only problems that sent me googling, so I opted to go that route. Basically you have three numbers in a triangle and you fill in the combinations so that the number sentences make sense.

Here's an example:

For this problem, the answer would be 4+8=12; 8+4=12; 12-4=8; 12-8=4. For problems with multiplying and dividing, the steps are the same but with the different operations.


I have a 3 page set of addition and subtraction triangles here and a 3 page set of multiplication and division here. I have left the final page blank so that you can fill in your own numbers, especially as you discover areas where extra practice is needed. I hope these are helpful!

Math Drills

When I started out homeschooling, I wanted to do as much as possible in the younger grades on a really tight budget. For math, I grabbed a Spectrum math book at Barnes and Noble using my educator's card for under 9 bucks. Then I used it as a skeleton for our year and added worksheets to each unit from printing out freebies. Spectrum has since gone common core as have most of the workbooks at the bookstore so I found a great alternate site that could make a very effective outline. It's called Math Drills and there are a set amount of pages for each skill. If you scroll down the page, you can see the main listing of skills and you can start with early skills like learning numbers under the number sense banner and go up from there. The only drawback is that the listing down below is alphabetical order and not by age/skill level, but only a little organization is needed to get around the sites. The other benefit to the site is that once you get to the page with the sheets, you can download the pages one at a time or in a mass pdf. This makes it much more easy to print the pages and assemble them into a binder to make your own workbook that is similar (if not better) to the common core ones on the shelves.

Once you have your basic pages printed and assembled, you can work through it with your child and go to the other free sites to print supplemental sheets as needed for you kid. There are two basic styles of math learning--spiral based and mastery based--and this create your own workbook method could work for either. Mastery focuses on learning a skill throughly before moving to the next topic. If you opt for mastery, you could use just the pages from Math Drills and add as needed from other sites until each skill is mastered. For example, if you kid learns numbers quickly and breezes through addition but gets stuck on subtraction, you can print extras of subtraction to insert before you tackle the time pages. Spiral math is heavy on reviewing topics as you go, so you can arrange the pages in your binder with the supplemental sheets scattered throughout the notebook and add sheets on weaker areas.

Overall, I'm glad that I found this site that could work as a solution for the common core workbook problem. I actually wish that I had known about this site before we finished first grade because I could have done a much better job tailoring his first year of math to his skill levels.

Homemade Base 10 Cubes

It was time to learn place values and I wanted a hands-on manipulative to use. I could have bought them for around $15 dollars but since we are homeschooling on a tight budget, I decided to make my own set. I used photoshop to make the basic squares and I also saved it as a pdf so that I could share it with others. Once I printed the different squares, I laminated them and attached small squares cut from my magnet roll to the top and bottom of each piece. Now we can use them on our magnet dry erase board. And since I used materials that I already had on hand, I didn't need to puchase additional items. If you don't have a laminator, you can use contact paper to preserve your cut pieces. I've uploaded the files of the master copies for your personal use. Here is the link for the first one, and here is this link for the second sheet.