Junior High Junction: Keeping Math Fun for Junior High {with Give-away}

Hi, and welcome to the 2nd Junior High Junction! If you linked up last week, thank you! And if you are new, please feel free to link up any post geared to our Junior High homeschoolers!

This week, I am going to share some fun, hands on ideas for keeping math fun in the Junior High years.

There are some things that just aren't fun to learn, and our junior high homeschoolers need to understand that. Everything in life isn't going to be fun all the time, and it's best if they learn to deal with that now rather than later. However, I don't think that math should always be unfun, either.

Here are some ideas you can use with your middle schooler.

1.) Fraction Dice! I bought this set of fraction dice for around $5 when Mikaela was working through Key to Fractions. We never really used them, but I pulled them out and decided put them to good use! I wrote several tasks for her to do in her Fun-Schooling Journal on the Math Time Pages. For example, I wrote "Roll 2 fraction dice, add, and simplify your answer" and "Roll 3 fraction dice and find the least common multiple." Fractions aren't the most fun math activity, but this simple game should help them seem less boring!


2.) Battleship Graphing Game! My three oldest and I love the game Battleship! When I saw on Pinterest that you could play the Battleship game with graph paper, I was instantly hooked! {I never thought that myself!} Here is the link to the game directions. All you need is graph paper and some pens {although there are tons of printable graph paper battleship games}! I am going to let my two oldest use their Fun-Schooling Journal Math Time Pages {which is just graph paper!} to play this game.

3.) A Math Quilt! I saw this and knew Mikaela would have a lot of fun designing this! I am going to give her simple instructions, like using only 5 colors and requiring a certain amount of geometric shapes. She can also do this in her Fun Schooling Journal on the graph paper!

 

4.) Sudoku Puzzles! Mikaela enjoys doing Sudoku puzzles, and the logic and thinking skills involved totally counts as math! This website has tons of free, printable Sudoku puzzles in easy, medium, and hard.


5.) Can You Make It? This game looks like a lot of fun. You have your child choose a random 2 digit number, and then 6 random 1 digit numbers. Then, your child has to create an equation that equals the 2 digit number using only the 1 digit numbers. Click here for the complete rules.

 

6.) Math Scavenger Hunt! This is a great idea and can be adapted for any age group! Look at this worksheet:

 

 

All you need is a newspaper! The actual website where this worksheet came from is no longer working, but you could make your own Word document.

 

7.) Make It Fit! This game uses graph paper, two dice, and two colored pencils. You roll both dice {say, a 4 and a 6}. You color a 4x6 or 6x4 grid on your paper and fill in the total area of the square {24}. You continue doing this, using two different colored pencils. This game will make your child use several math skills, including spatial reasoning. Plus, it looks like fun! Again, I'm going to have Mikaela do this in her Fun-Schooling Journal.

 

 

 8.) Figure Me Out! How fun is this! Use math equations to write information about yourself, like your shoe size, age, number of pets, and the number of letters in your name! You could make this as challenging as you'd like. Here is the link.

 

 

 

9.) Make an Orderly Tangle of Triangles! Your child can make this awesome triangle creation using just cardstock, an Xacto knife, and tape! The directions seem simple enough, and how cute would they be hung from the ceiling of their room?

 

 

 

10.) 31-wonderful! All you need is a deck of cards for this game. The rules are simple: arrange 25 cards in a 5x5 grid. The goal: Each row and column must equal 31! Your King, Queen, and Jack cards equal 10, and the Ace cards equals 11.

 











 

 

I hope some of these ideas will help keep math fun for your junior high homeschoolers! I know we are going to try all of them!

 

What are some more ways you keep math fun?

 

NOW FOR THE GIVEAWAY. You have probably heard me mention the Fun-Schooling Journal quite a bit in this post. I am giving away one 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Fun-Schooling Journal from the Thinking Tree. This is the journal Mikaela uses and loves. 

 

To enter:

1.) Link up your Junior High posts below for an automatic entry.

2.) Add the Junior High Junction button to your blog for 2 more entries. {It's on my sidebar near the top with a grab code.} You must tell me in the comments below that your grabbed my button!

 

I will choose a winner on Saturday morning, January 16, 2016.

 

An InLinkz Link-up