Understanding the concept of even numbers and odd numbers is an important math skill for children to possess from an early learning stage. How can you teach even and odd numbers to first to three grade elementary kids? You can make it interesting with the help of interactive activities like math games, manipulative, and recitation.
While teaching this key math concept, it is better to start teaching odd and even numbers from small numbers like 1 to 20. After that, you can move to multi-digit numbers.
As kids get familiarized with the basic concept, they gradually acquire proficiency to identify even and odd numbers for pretty large numbers.
Teaching Even and Odd Numbers To Elementary Kids (First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade)
Here are some ways to make teaching even and odd numbers easy and fun for them.
Even/Odd Recitation
Children love singing rhymes as they are more engaging and fun.
- For teaching even and odd numbers to kids, write numbers from one to ten on the board in a horizontal way. The trick is to use one color for odd numbers and a different color for even numbers for writing them on the board.
- We must to differentiate between even and odd numbers further. So, we can raise the odd numbers or make the even numbers slightly more significant to be easily distinguished.
- Now ask the children to practice saying the odd and even numbers by pointing them out on the board.
We can also tell the children to whisper odd numbers and shout even numbers so the students can easily recognize and learn the pattern. This exercise also helps students understand that zero is not even or odd, and also any number ending with zero is always even.
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Rolling the Dice
It is a fun group activity for the kids to learn about even and odd numbers.
- Divide students into two groups and provide them with a piece of paper, a pencil, and dice for each group.
- Ask the students to part the paper into two columns and label one column with odd and the other with even.
- Now, ask each group to roll the dice and count the number of dots on the dice and record the finding on the odd or even column on the paper with the pencil.
- Let the children play the game for 10-15 minutes while recording the outcome on the paper each time.
- After this, ask the students to count which team has an even number versus which team has more odd numbers.
Teaching even and odd numbers to elementary kids with this method is very effective.
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Teaching Through Even-Odd Secret Game
This game is an entertaining way for teaching even and odd numbers to the students to identify more significant odd and even numbers.
- Teach kids to look at one place of any large number to find out if the number is even or odd.
- Write some even numbers with TWO at ONE’s place on the board, such as 12, 32, and 42.
- Now instruct the students to look at the ONE’s place.
- Write all the ten numbers ending with two on the board vertically and explain that all numbers ending with the number 2 are even numbers.
- Repeat this game with other larger 2,3,4, or more digit numbers for students to quickly understand the concept.
- Also, you can play an odd game with the students by asking them to place their heads on the desk and raise their hands if they know the number spoken aloud is odd or even.
- As the kids find it easy to differentiate between odd and even numbers of single-digit and two-digit numbers, increase the number value from hundreds to millions.
This game is fun, and students easily understand the concept of odd and even numbers.
Getting the hang of the skill of distinguishing between odd and even numbers is very important for the student’s math journey. It is significant to impart the teaching even and odd numbers concepts by making the student practice and apply these concepts using real-life examples.
Cuemath provides various interactive resources for kids to learn math better through visualization and application. You can also find some exciting games and puzzles for teaching even and odd numbers at cuemath.com.
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