Second-grade students are ready to start memorizing basic math facts, such as addition and subtraction. Flash cards help them by allowing for easy drilling on these facts. Play a fast-paced flash card game by having your students sit in a semicircle around you. The first student answers as many flash card match questions as he can, given three to five seconds for each one, until he misses one. The next student answers as many as she can. If she answers more than the first student, she is then made "it" and switch places with the first student. If she doesn't, the first student goes on to challenge the next student.
Play money is a readily available math teaching tool. Students can learn to make change, the value of money, fractions and basic math functions using money. A math manipulative that sometimes makes a big impact is to buy a case of 2,500 pennies from a bank for $25. This gives you a visual tool for teaching large numbers and enough manipulatives for your entire class to use during math class.
Cards with squares marked off for place values are one way to help students learn this math concept. They are easily made out of rectangular pieces of cardboard or construction paper, and then can be used with square pieces of paper that have numbers 1 through 9 written on them to make large numbers. Students can work together by writing down large numbers for each other to use their place value cards to figure out.
Rulers, yard sticks and measuring tapes are tools that give students a visual understanding of size, length, height and other measurements. They can be used to start to teach students about area and space as well. Students can use their measuring tools to compare the length of two or more items, record how much each student grows over the course of a school year or how many students it would take to be as tall as a tree or building.