I Love Math for Love

Tiny Polka Dot and Multiplication by Heart

I love this company. I want to buy everything they sell. If I could become a Math for Love salesperson I would make myself, and them, a fortune. Here are the two games we have and why we love them. But honestly, don’t bother reading, just go and buy them for yourselves right now.

Tiny Polka Dot is a deck of cards, 0-9. There are several different groups — some 0-9s are arranged like dice face, some in a ten frame, some in a circle, some like random blobs. And there are lots of suggestions for games you can play with some or all of the cards, for different ages, and with suggestions for how to make them harder or easier. It is such an easy and fun way to really get to grips with early maths. We play a memory game where you have to find pairs that make ten, 21 where you ‘hit’ or ‘hold’ with a mystery card, trying to get close to 21 but not go over, 31 where you add up your running total and the person who can say ‘31’ is the winner, and many more. The children love them so I never have to persuade them to do some maths. It’s a joy and really effective.

Multiplication by Heart is a flash card system. There are six pockets in the box — you start with ten cards in box A and every time you get a card (eg. 5 x 4) correct you move it back a box, to box B, then C and so on. Every time you get it wrong it goes back to box A. A spinner tells you which boxes to do on which day so you get repeated practice at cards even when you’ve got them right several times. By the time a card is in box F you’ve got it right at least five times over five days so the chances are you really know it. We do it every day, it takes less than five minutes. Cards that have made it to box F we use as a warm up — I give them three cards each just to keep them fresh in their minds. 

The cards are very visual — you can count the dots or the squares to find out the answer if you’re not sure, or skip count (3, 6, 9), but the cards really encourage you to memorise each fact. I love how the arrangement of squares shows you exactly why 8 x 6 is the same as 6 x 8 - I turn the card by 90 degrees and it makes the exact same rectangle. I am truly amazed at how these cards work — my children aged 5 and 7 are now more comfortable with their times tables than I was at… well actually, ever. As so often with home education, I am learning just as much as the children.

Math for Love also have a free maths curriculum which you can download from their website, full of easy-to-implement maths activities. There are curricula you can buy too but I haven’t tried these.

In the UK you can buy Tiny Polka Dot and Multiplication by Heart from Steam Rocket, for some reason much less expensively than on Amazon.