![]() Tips on How to use Mental Math Worksheets On occasion, you may choose to use mental math as an opportunity to teach new math, but in general it’s best to use mental math to review math facts. If the mental math problems are ones your student has learned the math for, I suggest skipping them. We are looking for mastery in basic arithmetic and mental math is a tool that can help you achieve that goal. Mental math is best when it’s math the student has already learned and is proficient in. I usually do mental math as part of our opening activities and usually earlier rather than later in our school day. You can skip these or change them to suit your needs. In addition to basic arithmetic questions, I also added in telling time, measurement and money problems as well as a few word problems. For the younger grades, I have 2 36-week years worth of questions, that’s nearly 1500 questions! And for the older grades, I have 3 -36 week years of questions with over 3000 questions total! One or the other curriculum is sure to suit your student, but if not, you can certainly come up with questions on your own. I also standardized the number of questions each day: 4 questions for grades 1-3 and 6 questions for grades 4-8. Recently, I took those questions and sorted them out into two categories: younger grades (1st-3rd) and older grades (4th-8th). Sometimes I would ask 4-6 questions and other times up to 10 questions a day for my older students. Easy questions were mixed in with more challenging questions. I would reuse the questions year to year rather than come up with new ones (starting in 5th grade), and for the younger grades (1st-3rd), I usually came up with about half the questions on the spot. I’ve been doing mental math in our homeschool for many years, and over the years, I came up with thousands of questions. ![]() Or is there? What you ever tried math the Waldorf way? Instead of asking what is 3 x 4? You can ask what makes 12? When you ask the second question, you can have an infinite number of answers! Each answer is exact and right, but now instead of just having one right answer, you have several right answers. It isn’t maybe 47 or sometimes 49, it’s simply 48. One thing about math is that it is exact. When you add in fractions, decimals and percents, you can easily see how complex the questions can become. Often, they are two part questions which involve a multiplication or division question first, followed by an addition or subtraction question next. Mental Math are math questions that can be worked out in one’s head.
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