It’s nice to have a few fun math picture books thrown in with your usual bedtime reading to help get kids thinking about math as part of their everyday world along with stories of pirates, animals or whatever happens to interest your kids. Here are a few books that my children and I have enjoyed lately that can help spark an interest in math concepts and ideas. The Boy who Loved Math by Deborah Heligman and LeUyen Pham erdos I love this book. It tells the story of Paul Erdős who had the most incredible life as a mathematician. He was a prodigy with two math professors for parents. His mother had lost two daughters to scarlet fever before Paul was born, and as a result she was extremely over protective with Paul, to the point that she didn’t want him going to school for fear of him picking up any germs. Staying at home and left to his own devices, he was able to develop his mathematical ability. Paul Erdős was so focused on thinking about math that he lived a very unconventional life, including never learning to butter his own bread, do laundry or drive a car. Instead he relied on friends and colleagues to take care of him, and in return he would travel around the sharing his knowledge with other mathematicians. He wanted to spend all of his time thinking about math.  Paul Erdős was such an interesting figure because he lived the way that he wanted to live without regard for social convention, money, fame or status, which is a very appealing idea for kids (and adults!). He shared himself and his mind and he showed the world that math can be fun. Bedtime Math Stories by Laura Overdeck and Jim Paillot bedtimemath My kids can’t get enough of this book. The book is arranged into short stories about food, animals, vehicles, sports and odd jobs that are followed by questions to be answered. My 6 year old and my 9 year old are both able to take part in trying to figure out the answers to the mental math problems because for each story there are three levels of question to answer (Wee Ones, Little Kids, Big Kids). The only problem with this book is that it might keep your kids up late wanting to complete another story. Luckily there are two books in the series and judging from the success and how much my kids like these books there are sure to be more on the way. The illustrations are great and sometimes cute and funny. Highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to help get kids thinking about math. Check out their website and a Facebook page. grapesofmath Greg Tang has a whole series of fun math books. If you like Bedtime Math the Greg Tang books are a little bit similar in style. He has written two books of math fables for the younger kids and a number of riddle based problems books for older children. You can read the books for free on his website, and be sure to check out the rest of the Greg Tang site for fantastic free math resources, especially the Kakooma section of the site; it is a lot of fun. Math Curse by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith mathcurse Math Curse is an older book, but it holds up well. It follows the idea of math in everyday life, and shows how it applies to everything. The books start with a teacher telling her class that “You can think of almost everything as a math problem”.  The next day the main character wakes up and sees everything going on in her life as a math problem, so she thinks the teacher has put a math curse on her. It’s a fun, interactive book, that will help kids see how math relates to their daily lives and it introduces them to all sort of concepts like volume, time, fractions, measurement, and money in a humorous way. This book would be especially great for teachers.

aMetal Math is the solving of mathematical problems using nothing but the human brain. In its most basic form, mental math can refer to doing simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems in your head. It can also refer to math tricks and secrets that give people the ability to do much more complicated math problems in their heads quickly.

The ability to do math in your head is a very important skill for children to master, and it will be useful to them throughout their lives. It is worth the effort to get your kids interested and excited about math because there is research showing that children’s proficiency in math correlates strongly with their future earnings, and an excellent way to go about doing this is by helping them become good at mental math.

fun mental math

Learning to do mental math takes a lot of hard work, practice and can be a bit difficult, but as with most things, the more your kids’ practice, the better at it they will become. Before getting to the cool part of mental math (the tricks), your kids need to have a solid foundation in basic math facts. They should be able to add and subtract numbers from 1-20 quickly, know their multiplication tables up to the 12s, and understand basic division. Once that is mastered, they can move onto the fun stuff and learn all the neat tricks that will make them love math and excel at school.

This post has a mix of resources that can help with mastery of basic math, as well as resources that help learn mental math tricks.

Free Online Mental Math Games

  • Mission 2110 Mental Maths is an enjoyable and slick game for children in grades 4 to 6.
  • Topmarks has a great list of mental math games with appropriate ages listed.
  • Math Blasters has been around for a while, but it is worth a look. There are lots of different forms for Math Blasters. You can get it as an app, like a Nintendo DS game, or play it directly on the Jumpstart site.
  • Math Playground is an excellent mental math game for grades 4-6.

Popular Books

There are lots of great math books that give excellent overviews of the best mental math strategies and tricks that are useful for kids to learn. It was a little hard to narrow down the list, so we are including all of our favorites. Check your local library for these titles, as they are all pretty popular books and will probably be available (for free!)

  • The Verbal Math Lesson Level 1: Step-by-Step Math Without Pencil or Paper (for ages 5-7) is a popular book with homeschoolers. This series has three levels that correspond to grade levels, so level one is for kids in grade one, etc. Verbal math is the same idea as mental math, and this book is a good starting point to help your kids begin to learn how to do math in their heads.
  • Speed Math for Kids: The Fast, Fun Way To Do Basic Calculations by Bill Handley (for ages 9+) is a good introduction for kids to mental math. It teaches kids how to multiply and divide large numbers in their head, what they can do to make addition and subtraction easy, tricks for understanding fractions and decimals, and how to quickly check answers every time they make a calculation.
  • Greg Tang has a cool series of books that are a slightly different approach to mental math. There are seven books in this series including Math Fables (ages 3-6), Math for All Seasons(ages 5-8), Math-terpieces (ages 5-9), The Grapes of Math (ages 7-12), Math Appeal (ages 7-12), The Best of Times (ages 7-12) and Math Potatoes (ages 7-12). These books help students learn to manipulate groups of objects in their mind using rhyming couplets, riddles, and visual clues. Also, check out Greg Tang Math.com.
  • Arithmetricks: 50 Easy Ways to Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide Without a Calculator by Edward H. Julius (for ages 10+) has easy math tricks that are appealing for kids. In addition to the 50 tricks, the text includes a review of mathematical concepts, applications, math curiosities, illustrations, and parlor tricks. This is a very well-reviewed and highly recommended book for children in grade 5 and up.

If you are looking for mental math books, a couple of titles that you will come across often are Short-Cut Math by Gerard W. Kelly and Secrets of Mental Math by Arthur Benjamin and Michael Shermer. These are great books to help older children to learn mental math, but we wouldn’t recommend getting these for anyone younger than 13 or 14 years old because they are written for an adult audience and would probably be a bit too much for younger kids.

Workbooks

If you want your kid to get good at mental math, they will need to practice. It is generally recommended to do at least 15 minutes a day of math practice. An easy way to get kids to practice is with some fun workbooks. Here are a few that have great reviews.

  • Daily Mental Math Series have workbooks for kids in grade 2 to grade 10. They are great for math practice to improve kid’s mental math skills
  • Singapore Mental Math Series are very popular workbooks that have a strong focus on mental math strategies. They have workbooks for grades 2-7.

Apps

Apps are sort of perfect for having kids practice their mental math. There are so many math apps to choose from that would be helpful to mental math practice we tried to narrow it down a bit, here are a few of our favorites:

  • Math Bingo (for ages 5-12) helps children learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide using the simple game of Bingo. This is an excellent app to help kids improve their math basics.
  • King of Math Junior (for ages 6+) is a mathematics game set in a medieval environment where you climb the social ladder by answering maths questions and solving puzzles.
  • Mathmateer™ has different math missions that involve various math concepts. It’s fun and helpful for kids learning math.
  • Mathemagics – Mental Math Tricks is a top-rated app that has been out for quite a while. It shows you almost 60 math “tricks” and then lets you practice what you learned in the lesson with a practice session. For older kids, ages 12+ and adults.
  • Quick Math – Arithmetic & Times Tables (for kids in Grades 3-6) and Quick Math+ (for kids in grade 5 and up) helps kids practice mental addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and mixed operations using handwriting recognition. It’s entertaining and addictive to play.
  • Math Evolve (for ages 6+) is an arcade-style game that is designed to help kids practice math facts, number sense, and mental math skills.

Free Online Videos

Schoolhouse Rock: Multiplication Classroom Edition If you are looking for something a little retro that reminds you of your childhood, check out this DVD. It’s not for everyone, but worth a look if you were into Schoolhouse Rock as a child.

For a slightly older child who has mastered the basic math facts have a look at this very watchable series on some of the more common mental math tricks:

Toys

Sometimes kids just aren’t into the worksheets and books, so you need a little bit of a different tactic. Here are some fun games that will help your kids with their mental maths without them even realizing they are learning.

  • Math War Addition and Subtraction Game Cards is a fun game to help reinforce addition and subtraction. A lot of the reviewers for this game mentioned that kids have so much fun that they don’t even realize that they are doing math.
  • Think Fun Math Dice (for ages 8-12) and ThinkFun Math Dice Jr (for ages 6+) are both fun and inexpensive games for early math learners. Parents like these dice because the games help reinforce essential math concepts, the games are short, and you can take these dice anywhere because they are small.
  • Sumoku (for ages 9-13) is a fun crossword-style game with numbers. Players add up their numbered tiles to a multiple of the number on the die. Scores grow with every connected row and column. It provides addition, multiplication, and division practice adds in some Sudoku-like puzzle problem-solving.
  • Sum Swamp Addition and Subtraction Game (for ages 4-7) helps kids learn the basic operations of addition and subtraction. Players roll all three dice and create a number sentence by placing the highest number first, the operation symbol second, and the smallest number last. The player then adds or subtracts the numbers and moves ahead the sum or difference.

Websites with useful Mental Math Tricks for Younger Kids

Luckily for parents, many mental math secrets are readily available online. Here are a few sites that break down some of the more common mental math secrets that kids can learn.

  • Woodlands Resources is an excellent straight forward list of some of the best multiplication math tricks that are suitable for younger kids.
  • Dear Teacher has a great breakdown of mental math tricks, for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

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