Multiplication Art Activities

Many children are visual learners, so what better way to teach multiplication than to incorporate art activities into your lessons? Activities can be simple ones that help students who are just discovering multiplication grasp the concept, or more complex, giving students who are already familiar with multiplication an opportunity to apply it in a new way.

Accordion Folds

Accordion folds are a quick and easy art activity that can be done with a sheet of paper and a pair of scissors. Children fold a piece of paper accordion-style nine times. They use scissors to cut a design out of the folded paper. After unfolding the paper, students see how the design illustrates 1 x 9. Next, students fold the paper back up and proceed to cut out more designs. The number of designs they cut will be multiplied by nine to create a new visually illustrated multiplication problem.

Tempera Prints

Tempera prints are another way that teachers can help students visually perceive basic multiplication problems. To begin, students fold a sheet of paper in half. Using tempera paint, they paint a design on one half of the paper. Students fold the paper in half again while the paint is still wet, which results in a copy of the image on the paper. This can illustrate 1 x 2.

What if students have two images? Teachers can instruct students to press their new print onto another sheet of paper entirely and ask students how many images they have made. This illustrates 2 x 2. Discuss with students how many images they would have if they copied the images again (4 x 4) and again (8 x 8).

Dream House

A dream house is an interesting activity for students because it gives them the opportunity to see what it takes to turn dreams into reality. Teachers give students a piece of graph paper and instruct them to draw a floor plan for their dream house. For this activity, students lines must follow the lines on the grid paper. After students have drawn their dream house, teachers ask them to figure out the square footage by multiplying the length and width of the rectangles that comprise the house and then adding the results together. Students can also use multiplication to determine how much it would cost to install carpet or even build the house, using data obtained from suppliers and builders. Students can accompany their floor plans with a drawing of the front of the house. The drawings and floor plans can become part of a classroom display about multiplication.

Book of Permutations

A book of permutations teaches how a small number of items can become a large number of items when combined in different ways. Students will need at least five pieces of paper that have been cut to the same size. Students use a ruler to divide the paper into three horizontal sections. They draw a series of human and animal heads on the top sections, a variety of bodies on the middle sections and different types of feet on the bottom section. Students should pay attention to proportion, making sure that the all of the pieces of paper have drawings of heads, bodies and feet that are roughly the same size. Students create a cover out of construction paper, and place the drawings between the covers to make a book, which is secured with staples. Students then cut along the horizontal lines to separate the heads, bodies and feet. The pages can be flipped to make new creatures. Teachers can show students how to figure out how many possible animals there are using multiplication. If the book has five full pages, the number of permutations is 5 x 5 x 5.