Multiplication Games for 5th Graders

What is Multiplication?

Multiplication is considered as a repeated addition. The multiplication tables and multiplication charts enable us to do this repeated addition in an efficient and fast way. Multiplication definition can also be considered as the inverse of division. There are multiple uses of multiplication in everyday life. In real life situations, also often the use of division and multiplication skills is required. For example, while handling money, sharing items between friends and cutting food into portions children are being introduced to the basics of the concepts of multiplication and division. Since they are introduced to the idea so early, they should be able to gain confidence in the subject and utilize these skills to solve problems in the later part of their life too.

Properties of Multiplication

Multiplication properties can also be used as strategies to multiply and divide. Examples:

• If 6 × 4 = 24 is known, then 4 × 6 = 24 is also known. (Commutative property of multiplication.)
   
• 3 × 5 × 2 can be found by 3 × 5 = 15, then 15 × 2 = 30, or by 5 × 2 = 10, then 3 × 10 = 30. (Associative property of multiplication.)
   
• Knowing that 8 × 5 = 40 and 8 × 2 = 16, one can find 8 × 7 as 8 × (5 + 2) = (8 × 5) + (8 × 2) = 40 + 16 = 56. (Distributive property.)

Math Multiplication Games for 5th Grade

There are various math aids through which how to do multiplication can be taught to preschool kids. Two most fun multiplication games and math activities that can help children practice multiplication are multiplication bingo and multiplication snap.

Multiplication Bingo

This is a 2 or more-players multiplication facts games in which there are different BINGO sheets and a problem deck containing multiple multiplication problems. Bingo sheets have random numbers written in a 5 X 5 multiplication grid.

Each participant gets a BINGO sheet. Shuffle the problem deck and turn out one problem. Kids should solve the problem in their heads, then check their sheet to see if the answer is there. When a child has the answer her sheet, she can draw an "X" over it or place a counter on the correct box. The first player to have five correct answers in a row vertically, horizontally, or diagonally shouts out ‘BINGO’ and wins the game.

Multiplication Snap

The rules of times tables snap are simple. There are two sets of cards, one containing the ‘times tables questions’, and the other containing the ‘answers’. At the start of the game, the cards should be shuffled, and distributed evenly to the players. The players keep their cards face down in a stack.

One by one, they take the top card from their stack and place it on a pile in the middle. When the card just placed matches the one before it, the players should call SNAP! and slap their hand on top of the middle pile. The first player to do this gets to keep all the cards in the pile. Some matches will be easy - for example if 24 is played on top of 24. Other matches will require knowledge of times tables - for example if 7x7 is played on top of 49. The most interesting matches of all will be when two matching question cards are played, for example, if 4x9 is played on top of 12x3.The winner is the player with the most cards left at the end. 

Other multiplication math games to recall multiplication tables and multiplication drills and to do multiplication problems are:

Times What?

A deck of cards is needed to play this game. Take out 2 random cards from the deck. (example 2 and 4), Multiply the numbers (example: 2 x 4 = 8). The product is the number of points you keep. Repeat 4 more times. The player that has the most points after 5 turns win.

Multiplication Quiz

It is a board game with the objective to reach the finish point. The game has varied note cards of multiplication facts.  The first player gets to study the note card with five facts on it for 30 seconds. After which player 2 will quiz the first player. If player 1 answers three or more problems correct, they can roll the dice and move the game piece the number shown on the dice. If two or less are answered correct, player 2 rolls the dice and moves. These steps are repeated till one of the players reaches the finish point.

Multiplication Game

The materials required to play this game are a game board, game pieces, and 2 dice. The objective is to be the first one to reach the end of the game board. The player who starts first rolls the two dice and multiplies the two numbers that appear (Example: Roll 4 on one dice and 5 on the other. That would equal 20.) The number of spaces moved is determined by the chart provided with the game. The second player repeats the same. Continue until a player reaches the end of the game board.

Building on 4th-grade math multiplication, students begin by decomposing numbers into base ten units in order to find products of single-digit by multi-digit numbers. Students use the distributive property and multiply using number disks to model. Practice with number disks is used for multi digit multiplication problems with recordings as partial products. Finally, the partial products method, the standard algorithm, and the area model are compared and connected by the distributive property

5th-grade math gives students the opportunity to apply their new multiplication skills to solve multi-step multiplication word problems and multiplicative comparison problems.

Multiplication by 10, 100, and 1,000

Children examine multiplication patterns when multiplying numbers by 10, 100, and 1,000. Reasoning between multiplication arrays and written sums on multiplication worksheets allows kids to see the role of place value units in multiplication. The multiplicative comparison is carried forward to grade 5 in the context of area and in the context of both calculations and multiplication word problems

Multiplication practice is required to develop procedural fluency. Children should especially learn the multiplication tables by representing it through multiplication table charts. Multiplication facts can be taught to kids by means of multiplication rap.

Multiplication Strategies for 5th Graders

1. Using Number Disks

Let us use the number disk method to find the product of 3 x 10. Suppose there is a group of 3 ones. Now multiply 3 ones by ten i.e. just move each disk over to the tens place and get 3 tens. Draw an arrow indicating that the disks shift one place to the left, label it × 10 and write 3 ones × 10 = 3 tens. How to multiply the result further by 10? Do the same thing again. Move them one more place into the hundreds and get 3 hundreds.

Number disks can also be used to represent products when multiplying by a two-digit number. For example Solve 15 × 10

2. Using Area Model

This model can be used to represent two-digit multiplication problems and find the solution through easy visual representation. Let us see how to multiply 10 by a two-digit multiple of 10. Example: Solve 50 × 40

Area model can also be used to represent the product of a two-digit multiple of 10 by a two-digit number. For example: Find the product of 60 and 34 using an area model.

First, draw an area model to represent 60 × 34 and then write the expressions that solve for the area of each rectangle. The area of the small rectangle is 6 tens times 4 and the area of the larger rectangle is 6 tens times 3 tens. Now add the areas:  240 + 1,800 = 2,040. Hence, 60 × 34 = 2,040.

3. Using Place Value Chart

Let us solve double digit multiplication of 40 ×

Other ways to write the expression are:

40 × 22 = (4 × 10) × 22

40 × 22 = 4 × (10 × 22)

40 × 22 = 10 × (4 × 22)

Express 22 on the place value chart. 10 × 22 is 2 hundreds and 2 tens.

Show 4 times as many i.e. draw disks to show 3 more groups of 2 hundreds 2 tens.

You will get: 8 hundreds and 8 tens.  Therefore, 4 × (10 × 22) = 880 or 40 × 22 = 880.

Next let kids see that they can conceive the problem as 40 times 22, without breaking the process into the two steps of multiplying by 4 and 10 in whatever order as below:

4. Using Partial Products

Partial product method can be used to Multiply two-digit by two-digit numbers. This method pre-requires the area model. To find the product of 23 and 31 first draw an area model to represent 23 × 31 and then write the expressions that solve for the area of each rectangle. The area of each rectangle gives partial products. Summation of all partial products yields the final area. In this example, the area model gives 4 smaller rectangles with partial areas as- 9 tens, 3 ones, 6 hundreds and 2 tens. The sum is 6 hundreds, 11 tens and 3 ones. 11 tens can be regrouped as 1 hundred and 1 tens. Hence, the final sum will be 713. That means that 23 × 31 = 713.