Multiplication Mysteries

Treat students to fun this Halloween as they practice their multiplication “tricks”

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Mystery Mansion
Boo! How many legs, wings, hands, eyes, and teeth belong to the creatures in the Mystery Mansion? Let your students practice problem solving and multiplication with a lift-the-flap pair of Reproducibles. First, pass out the Mystery Mansion Reproducible (PDF), below and have your students cut out and color the mansion and creatures. Each square containing a set of creatures will become a window flap on the mansion. Have children use clear tape to affix the top of each square to the top of a window. To calculate the features on each creature, children lift the flap to reveal the word problem underneath. Give children time to solve the problems on scratch paper. When the problems are solved, they can write their answers as equations on a separate sheet (for example, 6 x 2 = 12).

Candy Corn Calculations
Invite your students to have fun practicing their multiplication in a tasty, hands-on way. Use this activity for children to see ? their multiplication tables as they create sets of candy corn to solve their own products. First, divide your class into groups of two; provide each group with a pair of dice and 40 pieces of candy corn. One child will roll one die to represent the number of sets of candy the pair will make. The other child will roll the second die to find out how many pieces of corn will be in each set. For example, one child might roll a 6 while his or her partner rolls a 5. Together, the children arrange the factors they've rolled (6 sets of 5 pieces of candy corn, or 6 x 5 = 30). Circulate around the room to help kids find their factors, multipliers, and products. For Older Students: Those that are ready for work with larger numbers can use playing cards instead of dice for this activity. Remove the face cards from a standard deck and provide partners with the Ace through 10 cards. To play, each child chooses a card to find the factors.

Mystery Trick or Treat Bag
Have students reach into the trick or treat bag to pull out a mystery! Provide pairs of children with paper bags with Trick or Treat written on them; pass out scraps of paper on which they can copy the numbered problems below before placing the problems in their bags. Next, ask each pair to grab and solve a problem, writing out their thinking, factors, and products. 1. Five children each got six candies. How many pieces did they have all together? 2. Seven witches lost their pointed shoes in a ditch. How many shoes did they search for? 3. Four scarecrows needed gloves. How many gloves did they need in total? 4. Three monsters got eight stitches each. How many stitches did they get in all? 5. Six goblins each ate three caramel apples. All together, how many apples did they eat? 6. Three ghosts came home with eleven lollipops each. How many did they have?

Bat Wing Stew
Distribute the Wing Stew Mini Reproducible (PDF), below. Students multiply the various ingredients to convert the given recipe into an equivalent recipe, writing their answers in the blanks. They can then make up their own recipes for classmates to solve.

Reproducibles:

• Mystery Mansion 1 Reproducible (PDF)
• Mystery Mansion 2/ Bat Wing Stew Mini Reproducible (PDF)

Jodi Simpson is a primary teacher in Paonia, CO. This article was originally published in the October 2003 issue of Instructor.

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