Make Multiplication Fun with Crafts and Games

I love sharing ways to make learning more fun, and when we can make learning things that kids have to learn a little more interesting, that’s always a good thing.

Multiplication is a vital math basic, but just memorizing multiplication tables isn’t that much fun, and some kids are just bad at it (confession: I never learned mine because my teachers emphasized memorization and I just couldn’t do it).

Math games and projects like these might make it easier for some kids to learn, and more fun for everyone.

Skip counting is a fundamental skill that comes before learning multiplication, and you can practice counting by twos while making art with this activity from Nurture Store. This is a classic butterfly symmetry painting project with a counting twist, but I think you could make it even more of a counting project by representing the numbers on the butterflies themselves. Use two colors on the butterfly that will be 2, for example, or four different shapes for 4 or six spots for 6, etc.

This Reading Mama has a collection of six multiplication table puzzles on two different levels (level two has more pieces). Kids can cut out the puzzle pieces and put them together to make a multiplication table.

Rock Your Homeschool has a great set of printables using multiplication to make color by number mandalas. Each color is indicated by a multiplication problem (like 2×2 is blue) while the sections to color are numbered with the answers (or vice versa). There are pages for each set of math facts from multiples of 2 to 12, as well as a mixed page. These are not free but they are really cute and would be great for a classroom!

Kids of a certain age in mid-elementary school seem to go through a cootie catcher phase, so combine that with learning math facts with these printable multiplication cootie catchers from Artsy Fartsy Mama. These include math facts for multiples of 2 through 9, and as kids choose colors as they play they’ll get a multiplication problem to answer.

Free Printable – Math Calculator Game

Teachers Love This Version Of Monopoly – See Why

Cool Math Art with Parabolic Curves

Adding and Counting Machine

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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