Grade 4 · Math Mountain
Grade 4 is where arithmetic stops being about the answer: multiplication facts have to be fluent, remainders have to be interpreted, and fractions arrive as quantities rather than shaded shapes. Daily Academy tracks each of those separately, because a grade 4 fraction gap is the single best predictor of trouble in secondary math.
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Canadian provinces write their curricula separately and word them differently, but the grade 4 expectations below are common across all of them. Daily Academy is skills-based rather than built to any one province’s document — see how it maps to your province.
Shading three of four boxes is not comparing. A child who cannot say whether 3/4 or 2/3 is larger, and why, has a gap that ratio, percent and algebra will all charge interest on.
27 children in vans of 6 needs five vans; 250 rolls in boxes of 12 fills twenty. Same division, opposite handling. Children who learned “r3” as notation rather than as a leftover apply one rule to both.
The first number a grade 4 problem produces is usually a real, plausible-looking answer. Stopping there is the most common lost mark in the year, and it is a reading habit rather than an arithmetic one.
Straight from the library, at the difficulty they are served at. Every question carries an explanation that appears after answering, whether the answer was right or wrong.
Number Sense
There are 3 cats and 6 dogs.
Are there more cats or more dogs?
Why: There are more dogs. 6 is more than 3.
Addition
Which one makes 5?
Why: 4 + 1 = 5. The others make 2, 4 and 6.
Subtraction
6 − 3 = ?
Why: 6 − 3 = 3. Counting backwards is one way; knowing that 3 and 3 make 6 is a faster one.
Multiplication
Which is the same as 7 × 4?
Why: Seven 4s and (7 × 3) + 7 both make 28. Knowing a nearby fact helps you find a new one.
Mastery is estimated per skill, never per subject, so strength in one can never average away a gap in another. Each page below carries a question you can ask tonight to check it yourself.
By the end of grade 4, most Canadian curricula expect fluent multiplication facts to 10 × 10, division with remainders, equivalent fractions and comparison of fractions, decimals to hundredths, area and perimeter of rectangles, metric unit conversion, and multi-step problems solved with an explanation of each step.
Because almost everything after them is built on proportional reasoning — ratio, percent, rates, slope and algebraic fractions all assume it. Research on mathematics attainment repeatedly finds fraction knowledge at this age to be among the strongest predictors of later secondary results, ahead of whole-number arithmetic.
Usually because the questions have two steps and the first step produces a believable number. Check by asking what the question was actually asking for before any calculating — if that is where it breaks down, more times-table drilling will not help.
Twenty minutes, five stops, and every question pitched at your child rather than at their year group. The daily mission is free and stays free.