Math enrichment for 1st grader who hates to read

[Anonymous]

My 1st grader is pretty good at math—not super advanced, but in the highest math group in her class and enjoys doing math challenges. She’s not yet a fluent reader so she hates word problems that she has to read on her own.

I’m looking for a fun math class or program that will support her interest in math without requiring too much reading. I don’t want her to have tons of homework/worksheets to do at home—the goal is to have fun while also supporting her interest in math. Thoughts on classes or fun apps for this purpose? I’m more interested in classes than apps but either is fine. She doesn’t want me to just read math problems from a workbook to her—my participation feels like pressure to her, so I need a class she can attend without me!

[Anonymous]

Focus on reading.

[Anonymous]

OP here. We do lots of reading practice. She’s at grade level for a 1st grader, which means she’s not fluent enough to keep up with her interest in math. She loves math, and I want to support that, not just focus on the stuff that’s hard for her. If your kid is good at and enjoys soccer but is bad at baseball, do you just sign him up for baseball? I think the same concepts apply to academics—sometimes it’s fine to peruse what you’re good at and enjoy. Sure, she needs to improve her reading, but she really wants to do more math too.

[Anonymous]

One way to kill her enjoyment of math is overdoing it.

Nobody has to play baseball but they do need to read.

[Anonymous]

Look for math games that she can play. One game my son liked was to call out a number and then roll die until you could get to that number. You could add and subtract. As he got older we included multiplication and division.

There is a game called Sleeping Queens that is math based. It plays pretty quickly and initially focuses on addition and subtraction. It isn’t hard ot add in multiplication, division, and equations as your child gets older. We were playing it this summer on vacation with cousins.

Games like Set and 24 are available.

Maybe teach her cribbage, lots of counting and adding and finding patterns in that game.

We didn’t start with math classes for DS until he was in 3rd grade and we did that because distance learning was awful and he loved math. Before that we played lots of board games and basic math games.

[Anonymous]

Math crosswords are fun. https://www.creativecenter.brother/en-us/home/home-category/learning-activities/worksheets/math-crosswords

[Anonymous]

She might like the bedtime math app if you do it together and you read the questions- it’s maybe 5min/night but can be a fun, consistent way to add harder math

[Anonymous]

maybe Beast Academy?

[Anonymous]

Here are some ideas to encourage math at home without worksheets and word problems:

Hoagies has links for enrichment for all ages and subjects.
https://www.hoagiesgifted.org/math.htm

Cyberchase (animated PBS show) is great for introducing math concepts (although recent seasons have shifted focus). Earlier seasons can be seen here:
https://pbskids.org/cyberchase/videos/?selectedID=...5c-0ec9-4490-9f88-7890cfb1689a


The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has lots of ways to explore/play with math concepts:
http://nlvm.usu.edu/

Cooking is fantastic for working with fractions.
I’ve always known cooking was great for math, but poster 08/04/2020 11:44 took it to a whole other level. I wish I’d read their post when my kids were still young.
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/901600.page

Get her a tape measure and/or a timer. Let her go crazy measuring things and timing herself. You can even check out a Guinness Book of World Records from the library and read to her about some of the records others have set.

If she doesn’t know how to tell time yet, get her an analog watch. They make teaching models:
https://www.amazon.com/time-teacher-watch/s?k=time+teacher+watch

Games of all kinds are great for math. Some, like Sleeping Queens (great game) and Monopoly directly incorporate math into the game. All games, however, involve some math (counting spaces, keeping score, logical strategic reasoning, geometrical thinking, etc.).

Assuming she’s learned about money, play store with her and consider giving her an allowance. Money is one of the best ways to help with math as it involves counting, place value, addition, subtraction, fractions, decimals, and multiplication. If she doesn’t know about money, I can suggest a relatively painless way to teach her.

She might like math/number puzzles. She could do Sudoku or Magic Squares. Here’s a short book to her about Magic Squares that you could read to her about the subject to get her started.
https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Magic-Squares-Step-Into-Reading-Step/dp/0375806210


Buzz is a verbal math game where you count and replace the numbers in a chosen pattern with the word buzz. For example, if you select the rule to be numbers with a 3 in them then when you reach numbers like 3, 13, 23, 30, 31, 32, . . . You say the word buzz. This game is flexible because you can change the rules to match whatever the child is learning (even/odd, multiples, primes, squares, Fibonacci numbers, etc.) You can also mix and match rules (all numbers with a 7 and multiples of 5).