If your teenage daughter is having a hard time understanding the differences between commutative property and the other math properties, quiz her on the way to school, to the mall or to her friend's house. Say the words verbally or use flash cards. Ask her, "What property of multiplication is this?" And give her examples like (2*3)4=2(3*4), which is the associative property; 9*8=8*9, which is the commutative property; 4(6+3)=4*6 +4*3, which is the distributive property; or 5*1=5, the multiplicative property.
Teenage girls like to use the Internet to chat, email, and visit social networking sites. Allow her to spend more time online or on her phone by asking her to first spend time on the Internet playing interactive games practicing the commutative math technique. Games exist online that allow young people to test their knowledge by guessing correct answers in 60 seconds and how fast they can get 20 more correct answers than wrong answers (see Resources).
Choose a food or snack that your teenage girls are fond of, such as cookies, pizza or salad. If it's a salad, make seven small leafy-green salads. Separate the salad bowls into two groups, one with three and the other with four. Cut up several tomatoes and broccoli into bite-size pieces. Point to one of the salad groupings and ask the girls how many vegetables need to go in each bowl to equal 12. Do the same with the other salad group. Have the teenagers place the correct number of vegetables in the bowls. The group of four salads should each have three and the group of three salads should each have four. Ask the girls to tell you how they can apply the commutative method. If they multiply three vegetables by four bowls and four vegetables by three bowls, both numbers equal 12.
Ask your teen daughters to point out objects on a road trip that could be applicable to the commutative property. For example, if you see two cars ahead of you with two passengers each. It might be hard to find good examples, so the girls should bring along notebooks to write down what they see, like a sign with three sentences, and then wait to see if they find three signs with one sentence each, to equal each other.