Magic and Mayhem

I was feeling bad for not doing enough homeschool today so this evening I went down and gathered up the kids.  I grabbed a bag of dark chocolate chips and their eyes lit up.  They know the drill.  Chocolate chip math is a favorite around here. 

We’ve been doing some version of CCM for years.  It’s a fun way to combine dessert with arithmetic!

For tonight’s version, I gave each kid a number.  Jack was 2, Anna was 3 and Victoria was 4.  I told them that I’d say a number, and if their number was a factor of my number then they should raise their hands.  I explained to Jack that any even number would be a multiple of 2, so as long as it ended in 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8 then 2 would be a factor of my number.

Then I started tossing out numbers.  I did 24 first, since it’s divisible by all 3 of their numbers.  From there I just randomly did numbers, giving the kids plenty of time to figure out if their hands should go up.  They had to tell me what number would be multiplied by theirs to get my number, too.

We did that for a while and then moved on to plain old multiplication.  The girls shouted out the answers and whoever got it first got a chocolate chip.  Victoria is older but Anna is often better in math, so I figured they were about even.  Victoria ended up with more chocolate chips but Anna didn’t seem to mind.  They were both shouting and laughing and fumbling over their numbers from trying so hard to earn chocolate.