Time to Measure Up!

We used, "Measure Up" in the title of this blog post because we're pleased to announce that some of the worksheets on the Measurement Page at Math-Drills.com were updated. A few other updates were also made that we outline below.

Temperature Worksheets

The converting Celsius and Fahrenheit worksheets were all updated and a couple of new ones made their way into the mix. For some reason, we previously overlooked making versions of the Celsius to Fahrenheit and Fahrenheit to Celsius worksheets that included negatives. We fixed that oversight, of course.

You might also like the "Temperature Conversion Guide" (pictured to the left) that we created to help students understand this topic. The page includes four different ways to convert temperature: using a table of benchmarks, using a visual thermometer, using a graph, and using formulas. There are also a few standard temperatures that students might like to know to impress their parents and friends.

Time Worksheets

The new elapsed time worksheets expand our collection from one choice to twelve choices including intervals of 1, 5 and 15 minutes, and 1, 5, and 15 seconds. In addition, there are choices of short elapsed times (up to 5 hours) and longer elapsed times (up to 24 hours).

Converting Between Inches and Centimeters

We originally set out to update the original worksheet in this section, then got side-tracked thinking that not all students would be able to use a formula to convert between inches and centimeters. Instead, we added some conversion worksheets that ask students to use rulers to perform the conversion. The rulers are conveniently printed at the top of the worksheet and arranged so that the inches and centimeters line up with each other. Using any sort of straight-edged object should have students converting in no time.

Another feature of these worksheets is that the rulers should print out to be actual size, so you can cut out the rulers to use for measuring objects. Because of the variety of printers and "fit to page" options, however, we can't guarantee that they will be exact for you.

Metric Conversion

All of the Metric conversion worksheets were re-made and a couple of new ones added, specifically for converting milligrams and grams and converting grams and kilograms. These worksheets are useful for students who are learning the Metric System or for a practical application of multiplying and dividing by powers of ten. They might be applicable to many science classes as well.

Some of the old worksheets had conversion information at the top of the page. We removed that from the new versions and created a "Metric System Conversion Guide" instead. The guide replaces the help text that was on the old worksheets with a more comprehensive overview that might help students put things into perspective rather than remembering individual conversions. The guide was made for elementary students, so it might not cover everything that a middle school or high school teacher might like covered.

Other Updated Worksheets

We received a couple of requests for specific multiplication and division worksheets focusing on key groups of facts, so we made them! For anyone who may also teach multiplication and division using these key groups of facts, you might be interested to know that we have added worksheets for multiplying with 0, 1, 2, 5, 10, multiplying with 3, 4, 6, multiplying with 7, 8, 9, and multiplying with 11, 12. Division worksheets were also added for these groups of facts although the division version of the first group excludes 0 since we all know that you can't divide by zero!

Some people were having issues with some of the addition worksheets printing answers on both the question and answer pages. We haven't identified the circumstances that would cause this to happen, but we did identify which worksheets were causing this to happen, so we've started to replace them with versions that won't cause the same issue. One example of updated worksheets can be found in the Three-Digit Addition section. We appreciate very much when our users take the time to send us information about things that don't work or have errors on them, so we can fix them for everyone!

Thanks for subscribing to our blog! If you would like to know about worksheet updates the moment they happen, you can follow our New Worksheet Announcements board on Pinterest or follow @MathDrills on Twitter as we are now trying to post our Pinterest updates in parallel on Twitter.

Subtraction Distraction

This past week, we were distracted with the subtraction worksheets page.  A number of new worksheets and some old ones were revised.

Subtraction Tables

We approached the new subtraction tables in two different ways. The first was to make them look a lot like the division tables we created a few months back. These come in a variety of options including, color, grey, and one version that includes 13 pages where one difference is highlighted on each page. All of these options are available in facts from 0 to 11 and facts from 1 to 12.

The second approach was to make the subtraction facts into a grid. This is something we couldn't do with division tables because of the variety and number of dividends possible. With subtraction though, it was fairly easy to accomplish because there is a limited range of minuends. Because these are meant for younger students who are learning their subtraction facts, we "grayed" out the negative numbers. These tables come in filled and blank versions.

Five Minute Subtraction Frenzy Charts

You might be familiar with our addition and multiplication five minute frenzies. Well, we finally made some for subtraction. These are wonderful tools for practicing subtraction facts, but they should not be used with students who don't know their subtraction facts yet. For students who are still learning their facts, have them only fill in the rows for facts they do know. For students who know all of their facts, one activity you can try is to see if they can improve their time by spending a few minutes on one each day.

Multi-Digit Subtraction

The multi-digit subtraction section already existed, but we re-made the worksheets and added some more. The most notable improvement is that there are now "All" links for these worksheets. Some teachers and parents like the "All" link especially if they are planning on working on the same skill for a number of days and will need a number of worksheets to support the learning strategy they use. For those of you who still have an attachment to the "Old" versions of these worksheets, they are included as "Old" links.

All of the new multi-digit subtraction worksheets, of course do not have an "Old" link, so you can see we've added quite a bit on the page. There are now options for five-digit numbers, SI formats (Canada and other countries that use Metric number formatting), and Euro formats (e.g. Germany) where the thousands separator is a point rather than a comma.

Subtracting Across Zeros

Also a new section, the Subtracting Across Zeros a.k.a. Finding Complements section was added this week with a number of options. There are two categories... one where the zeros are part of a power of ten only (e.g. 10, 100, 1000), and one where the zeros are part of a multiple of a power of ten (e.g. 30, 800, 2000). We would recommend looking into some strategies other than "borrowing" to teach this skill as it would be useful to be able to complete subtraction questions mentally. In this case, it is quite easy with a little practice. One subtraction strategy that we've promoted before is "counting up". Counting up means that you start with the subtrahend (the number being subtracted) and count up to the minuend (the first number). For example, 1000 - 365 would work something like this: count up 5 to 370, count up 30 to 400 and count up 600 to 1000. The total amount counted up was 5 + 30 + 600 = 635 which is the difference (our answer). Now isn't that a little easier than crossing off zeros and borrowing?

These worksheets are also called Finding Complements because that is essentially what you do with them, except with the multiples of powers of ten, you must additionally "count up" the largest place value in the minuend. Finding complements has a number of applications including solving more difficult subtraction questions.

We hope that you find the new and revised subtraction worksheets useful. Thank you for choosing Math-Drills.com and please let us know if you have any comments or have an idea for a new math worksheet to add to the website. We appreciate very much when you share the website address or our worksheets with others, so thank you to all those who do that! If you are able to help promote our website by adding us to Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, or Pinterest, we have placed easy to use links on our new Social Pages section.

Geometry, Number, Integers, Algebra and Multiplication Requests

Recently, we had a number of varied requests for new math worksheets, and we were happy to oblige every one of them. If you follow our New Worksheet Announcements board on Pinterest, you may have already seen the new worksheets. If you have a request of your own, please don't be shy... drop us a note.

Geometry

Two different people actually asked for some eighth grade dilations worksheets, so we added a couple new ones and marked the existing one as "old" as the new ones replace it. The reason we leave the "old" ones around is because there is invariably someone who relies on that exact version to be around. Believe us, we've heard the complaints after removing something from the website! The two new dilations worksheets both have dilation factors of up to 4 or inversely down to 1/4, but one version uses only the origin as the dilation center, and the other version has various centers.

Number

We had a request actually quite a while ago for 120 charts that count backwards and some counting backwards worksheets starting with numbers up to 120. At the time, we made them and sent them off to the person who requested them, but we just got around to adding them onto the website. Hopefully, other educators and students will benefit from this fulfilled request.

Integers

This one started off as a request for an "All" link on our Integers Worksheets -- All Operations, but after we looked at the antiquated worksheets we had there, we went a little crazy and not only added the "All" link, but re-made the worksheets and added many other options including more ranges of integers and the option to have parentheses around all integers, just the negatives, or no parentheses.

Algebra

On the algebra page, we added an equalities worksheet that uses symbols for unknowns. Basically, students look at the two addition questions on either side of an equal sign, one of which includes an unknown, and they figure out what value for the unknown symbol makes the equation true. A number of ranges were included for these worksheets and would be a nice activity for students who are good at mental addition and need an extra challenge.

Multiplication

And lastly, we had a request for worksheets that focus on "Anchor Facts" for multiplication, specifically, multiplying by 0, 1, 2, 5 and 10. The other factor was requested to have a range of 1 to 12, so you will find them in the Multiplication Facts to 144 section.

That's it for this update; we hope you like the new math worksheets and use them to help students learn math. If you like our free math worksheets, please share the website address with teachers, parents, and other educators.