Sometimes you have to get creative with convincing your child to do math with you at home, especially if they have had previous experiences with math that left them feeling frustrated. Start off by having them design a picture with the cubes. Depending on your child’s level you can differentiate what you do next: you can have them count up the number of cubes they used for each color, or if they need to practice adding, help them create additional problems using their picture.

I love using [cubes] to help Ks and Gr 1s learn to count and make patterns. This also helps them learn that different people can use different colours but still have the same numbers in a pattern. Carla Lowther, Primary School Teacher Jennifer Van Blair from Learning Out Loud models repeated addition as a means of teaching multiplication with linking cubes.If you want to put your child on the path to mathematical success, I’m a firm believer that education starts at home. However, I also understand that parents need support to do this endeavor — and that’s why I’m here to help! Whether you choose to homeschool or place your child in a traditional school system, working on math skills at home (yes, even if your child attends school!) in engaging ways can really help build and/or enhance their foundational skills to set them up for mathematical success as they get older. In this post, I teach you 11 ways to incorporate linking cube activities to help engage your child in math. Make addition problems by putting cubes in two piles, then pushing them together and count how many are they all together. You can also use different colours of cubes and put the cubes for a relevant number of egg boxes. Now count them to see how many they are all together (this technique is mentioned in Singapore maths books). Make subtraction problems by starting with one pile of cubes and taking some away or use egg boxes by putting a relevant number of cubes in the box and then taking some away, ask children how many are left behind. Make multiplication problems by skip counting or adding equal groups of cubes. Fill up different-sized containers with the cubes and discuss the relationship between the size of the container and how many cubes fit in the container. You do not have to wait until your kids are “older” to introduce them to a certain math concept. The sooner the better!

Make a line of cubes to show how long your foot is. Who has the longest foot in the class? Whose is shortest? How long is your hand? Or how long is your book? As students become comfortable with patterns, you can move on to creating more complex sequences with more color and variation. Teachers can also encourage students to extend existing patterns. Provide small groups with a few prelinked cubes. Challenge the students to identify the pattern and then continue it by adding the next few links in the series. The domain of measurement and data covers many strains over multiple school grade levels. Teachers can use snap cubes as a nonstandard unit of measure in the primary grades before introducing centimeters or inches. Linking cubes can also be used to teach students about weight. Have students use a balance scale to compare the weights of different objects with snap cubes. For older grades, students can grab a handful of unifix cubesand display the data as a line plot, histogram, or bar graph.Use linking cubes to teach probability! Put different colored cubes in a brown paper bag and have students predict what color will be drawn based on the initial number of cubes. Snap cubes are an easily accessible classroom tool for modeling probability simulations, such as rolling dice or spinning a spinner. High-achieving students can also create their own probability problems for classmates to solve. For students struggling with statistical word problems, I like to use these cubes to model real-world scenarios. Give kids one minute to link together as many sets of 5 cubes as they can. When the minute is up, put them together and count the groups by 5. Do the same with 2s, 10s, 3s, or other sets for kids to practice skip-counting. Put an inequality symbol on a post-it and form two groups of cubes. Ask your child to count the number of cubes in each group and decide which quantity is greater. Let your child get creative and turn the inequality symbol into their favorite animal. Remember the animal’s mouth (the inequality symbol) always faces the larger group of cubes!6. Create a Picture Link the cubes together to form different patterns. Keep the patterns simple and make them more complicated as your child gets more comfortable with the different designs. It’s a great activity for any preschool-aged child.