Fun Kid Math

Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that come up unexpectedly. Yesterday I had the pleasure of experiencing one. 

The students were joking around during a math lesson about subtraction and one kid jokingly asked, "How much is half of Austin?" 

"Oh, that's easy!" I said, "It's Alexis!"

"Wait, what?" asked my student as Alexis' ears perked up. 

"OH I GET IT!" shouted another.

Each student in my classroom has a number. It makes life so much easier and I'm sure many of you have the same system. Therefore, just use the students' names instead of numbers to make it more fun! As an added bonus, I had them do this for points for their groups. They ware all given a list of names earlier in the day (for Valentine's Day), and I told them to get it out to use if they needed to.

I made it harder too by having addition of three digits. The kids LOVED it! I plan on adding this to my board math. Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest.