There are so many fun ways to use art to play with math. Here are some of our family’s favorites for all ages.
Make Factor Flowers
This is such a fun way to work with multiplication, factors and primes.
Factor flowers are just a variation on making factor trees.
- Write a number and draw a flower pot shape around it.
- Make two stems going up and write down two numbers that can be multiplied to make that number (factors). For instance, if your flower pot says 32 you could put 16 and 2, or 4 and 8.
- If either of those is a prime number then draw a circle around it and make it a flower.
- If it can be further divided, draw a square around it and draw two more stems going further up.
- The final flower pot will show you all the factors of that number. If you like, make them a different color flower for each final factor (like all the 2s are blue, all the 3’s are red, etc.) in your bouquet.
At Christmas time you can also make factor Christmas trees!
Make a Pi skyline
What Do We Do All Day has the instructions for this colorful idea to help kids learn and visualize the numbers in Pi.
She says, “Each building in the Pi cityscape represents a number in pi. Color in the number of squares on the graph paper that correspond to each digit of pi. Kiddo also decided to make a black dot to represent the decimal point. Kids can fill in columns of squares for as many digits as they wish.”
Play Roll an Array
Our family loves to play this multiplication dice game that involves a little bit of strategy and a little bit of luck.
Click here to print out ours.
Do Watercolor Symmetry
This classic painting activity is lots of fun and introduces kids to the concept of symmetry. Get out some white paper and watercolor paints and paintbrushes. Show the kids how to paint a design on one half and fold the paper to make the design show on both sides (you can pre-fold paper for younger kids). Talk about what symmetry means (when an object looks identical or like a mirror image of another object). If the two sides match, we say they are congruent.
You can also do shapes like butterflies like this project from Wheaton Arts.
Play Roll a Garden
This lovely idea from Blissful Roots is such fun for younger kids! Head over to her blog to print out the instructions. She also has printouts for roll a Christmas tree, roll a snowman, and more.
You can also head over to the Happy Home Fairy for her roll a pumpkin post that inspired them all.
Make Waldorf Multiplication Flowers
These are such fun ways to help kids remember multiplication math facts.
Help kids make basic flower shapes like these to learn what the multiples of each number are up to 10 or 12 (depending on how many petals you draw).
There are so many more fun ways to play with math and art. Holler if you’d like me to share more soon!
