Real-Life Math for Double-Digit Multiplication

Math is all around us. It is one of those things that so many items in everyday life can help kids learn. This means that there are aspects of everyday life where parents can help their kids understand math concepts and what is even better is these kids also learn life skills. As teachers, these real-life math problems are something that we should incorporate into our classroom. However, if I was talking about all the real-life ways to talk about math problems we would be here forever, and I don’t think that you have that kind of time to read a blog post. Therefore, this blog post is going to be specifically about real-life math for double-digit multiplication.

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Real-Life Math for Double-Digit Multiplication #1 Budgeting

The first way that you can teach real-life math for double-digit multiplication is through budgeting. Budgeting seriously needs to be taught way more than it is taught in school, which is practically none at all. I think there were maybe one or two assignments that I had in budgeting during my whole school career, and one of those moments was because I was in an advanced group of students who got to go on a special field trip. However, budgeting is one of the most important things that people need to know as adults so we need to be teaching kids how to do it. So how does double-digit multiplication work into budgeting? Well if you have so much money and you need to get multiply items of that same price you will need to multiply the price by the number of items that you need. The cost will always be at least 3 units and the amount that you need will vary but it will probably be in the double digits. In budgeting, you may also have to multiply monthly earnings by 12 to see your yearly earnings or monthly expenses. Of course, this would assume that your monthly earnings or monthly expenses will always be the same which may not always be true but there will probably be some things that are the same every month. This type of math will also help you see if the yearly deal on something is worth it or how much money you will save going yearly on things instead of monthly.

Overall, there are lots of things in budgeting where students will have to use double-digit multiplication, and the more they learn about budgeting when they are young then they will be able to apply that to their lives when they get older and that is important.

Real-Life Math for Double-Digit Multiplication #2 Car Math

Another way to teach real-life double-digit multiplication is car math. Most cars now are gas, however, double-digit multiplication can be used to determine things for electric cars as well. Let’s focus on gas cars for now, however. Double-digit multiplication is going to be needed to calculate how many miles one can drive on a full tank of gas. For instance, say you have a hybrid car that gets 40 miles to the gallon and the car has a 16-gallon tank. Then you would have to multiply 40 by 16 to see how many miles you can go on a full tank. 40 times 16 equals 640 miles per tank. So if you are going on a trip that is 400 miles then you know that you will not have to fill up your tank to reach your destination.

Students can also use double-digit multiplication to determine how much a tank of gas would cost. For instance, if gas costs $3.50 for a gallon of gas and the tank is a 16-gallon tank then the cost of a whole tank of gas would be $3.50 times 16, which equals $56. Students need to understand math like this to know about budgeting as well as we talked about above.

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Real-Life Math for Double-Digit Multiplication #3 Grocery Store Math

Another great way to do double-digit multiplication is grocery store math. Overall, a grocery store is a great place to teach kids math. There are so many opportunities in a grocery store to apply addition, subtraction, division, and of course double digit multiplication. There are two ways that double-digit multiplication can be useful at the grocery store. One of these deals with just finding the price of multiple items. The other is with percentages.

Real-life math for double-digit multiplication for grocery store math can be brought into the classroom by getting ads for stores and giving them to your students. You can make certain parameters that you must buy multiples of the same product. They have to buy at least 5 different products etc. You can give them a budget if you want. The idea that they have to buy multiples of an item will mean that they have to do double-digit multiplication to find their answer. You can put that as a rule as well however if you want kids to multiply and not fall back on addition. Of course, if students understand that repeated addition is the same as multiplication then that is good because they understand the concept of multiplication.

Another way to incorporate real-life math for double-digit multiplication with the grocery store or just stores, in general, is percentages. If an item is 20% off you multiply the price by 0.20 to see how much money off it is, or you could multiply it by 0.80 to see how much you will pay. If it is 15% off then students would multiply the price by 0.15 to see how much the item is discounted or by 0.85 to see how much you will pay for the item. Knowing how to work with percentages is super important for life, in general, to know how much you are saving when it comes to a sale so one is not caught off guard when they think something is cheaper than it will be. This is also why students should learn how to do this math well because it will help them so much in life.

Real-Life Math for Double-Digit Multiplication #4 Crafting

One of the last ways that you can teach real-life math for double-digit multiplication is by looking at craft materials. One of the major things that come to mind when I think of this is the idea of buying fabric. Fabric is a certain price per yard and normally people buy many yards of fabric. You can have students work with problems surrounding buying fabric. You can also have them look at other craft supplies as well. That activity would be very similar to the activity involved in the grocery store activities from above.

There are many different ways that you can use real-life math for double-digit multiplication in your classroom. It will help your students learn different life skills and double-digit multiplication while they are at it. In order to be great at double digit multiplication as well stuidents have to be great at single digit multiplication if you want a resource to help with this I have my Ultimate Multiplication Toolkit avaliable to my subscribers. To get it click the image below and fill out the form to become a subscriber.