Here's a fun math activity you can do with your students on the first day of school! It's a great icebreaker game that helps students get to know each other as they review basic math facts. Grab some markers, colorful sticky notes, and white paper, and get ready to figure each other out—literally!
In this activity, students will share number-related trivia about themselves using basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts.
For our example, we used the following trivia questions:
Students will fill up a piece of paper with the questions and their number answers. Then they will write math facts on sticky notes to cover up each of their answers. In our example, we used two addition facts, two subtraction facts, two multiplication facts, and two division facts. Your students may choose whichever math facts they want to represent their answers, but you may want to encourage them to choose different math facts if more than one answer is the same. You may also want them to use each of the four operations.
Once all the answers are covered with sticky note math facts, your students can swap papers with a partner. Students will take turns solving each other's math facts and checking their answers by peeking under the sticky notes.
When all math facts have been solved, you can ask your students to introduce their partner to the class by sharing one interesting bit of trivia they learned about them during the activity.
What are your favorite first-day-of-school activities? We would love to hear from you! Please share your ideas with our teaching community in the comment section below!
We hope you will check out our interactive math practice activities on iKnowIt.com and give your students a strong start in math this school year!