Math Skills

 Third grade is a big year for learning math! Kids learn about multiplication and division, dive into fractions, and even start calculating areas and perimeters.
 

What’s the best way to help your child nail third grade math? Food fractions! That slice of pizza is 1⁄8 of the pie. Compare 1⁄2 of a big doughnut with 1⁄2 of a small cookie — why aren’t they the same size? Instead of cutting that sandwich in half, experiment with thirds, fourths, and eighths. Talk through these food fractions with your child, and you’ll help your child understand this year’s most important math concept.

By the end of third grade math, here are the 10 key skills your child should learn (Four of them have to do with fractions!):

• Knowing the multiplication tables from 1 to 10 by heart.
• Multiplying and dividing with numbers up to 100.
• Understanding fractions as numbers that represent part of a whole.
• Placing fractions on a number line.
• Finding equivalent fractions.
• Comparing two fractions with the same numerator or denominator.
• Rounding numbers to the nearest 10 and 100.
• Telling time to the minute.
• Creating graphs to understand and solve word problems.
• Finding the perimeter and area of a rectangle.

Multiply, divide, and conquer math

Some things have to be committed to memory: name, address, date of birth — and the multiplication tables from 1 to 10. So much of math involves multiplication that your child needs instant recall of these products, from 1 x 1 = 1 to 10 x 10 = 100.

Beyond memorization, third graders need to understand multiplication as a way of finding the total number of objects without counting each one separately. Think of it as a quicker, more efficient way of adding.

For example: If Jessica has 4 boxes that are each stuffed with 7 teddy bears, how many teddy bears does she have? Jessica could dump them on the floor and count one by one, she could add 7 + 7 + 7 + 7, or she could multiply the number of boxes by the number of teddy bears in each box and quickly arrive at the answer, 4 x 7 = 28 teddy bears, in seconds. Being able to get that quick answer is nice, but it’s much more crucial that your child understand how and why all three methods work to get the same answer.

Just as your first grader learned to think of subtraction as the reverse or “undoing” of addition, your third grader needs to understand that division is like the reverse of multiplication. If multiplication is combining things, then division is breaking them apart into equal-sized groups. Math will make a lot more sense if your child understands the relationship between these two important operations.

For example: If 9 x 8 = 72, then 72 ÷ 8 = 9.

Third graders start learning the basics of algebra through multiplication and division by substituting an X for an unknown number and reversing the operation to solve for X.

For example: To solve 6 x X = 24, your child would divide 24 ÷ 6 = X. (And, if your child has memorized the multiplication tables, then she’ll know right away that X = 4.)