Reuse Old Addition Activities
Reuse puzzles and games
Because powers add up when powers are being multiplied, any of our old games and puzzles involving addition can be used to practice multiplying numbers that are powers. Some examples of these old addition activities are: Stage 3 – Shape Sums and Sum Groups; Stage 4 – Enclosed Sums, SumTriangles, and Fix It.
Examples
Above are two examples from Stage 3 – Shape Sums. Below are the same examples for Shape Products, using multiplication instead of addition.
Working with powers will become routine and be just as easy as the original addition problems.
Variations
If your child enjoys these problems and wants some extra challenge, start involving more than one number being raised to a power. For example, if you multiply (42 × 33) × (45 × 32) you can apply the rule separately to the powers of 4 and the powers of 3 and get the result 47 × 35.