games for math

A good friend of mine let me borrow one of her books the other day...

Games for Math

It is such a cool little book! I have acquired quite a collection of math game books but haven't really loved any of them. Then my friend let me borrow this one. First of all, it does not require a collection of fancy materials to make the games work. And for the most part, there is no prep.

I decided to try out our first game yesterday. Clara and I played in the morning and she enjoyed it so much that she wanted to teach Alex how to play that afternoon.


Basically, each child rolled the die twice. On the first roll, they made that many big circles on their card. On their second roll, they made that many items inside each big circle.

Then we wrote out the problem two ways...
First as an addition problem, then as a multiplication problem.

So, in the case of Clara's pink card at the bottom...on her first roll she got a six, so she made six big circles. Her second roll, she got a two, so she made two little circles inside each big circle.

Since we were only concerned about the little circles, her addition equation looked like this:

2+2+2+2+2+2=12

and her multiplication equation looked like this:

2x6=12

She didn't actual "do" the multiplication. We worked more on the concept of how to set up the equation and seeing the relationship between it and the addition equation.

Oh... back to the game... whoever had the highest answer on their card got to keep both cards. In the end, the person with the most cards won. I'm not sure if that was how it was outlined in the book but that's how it ended up at our house. The kids love to play war so they just treated it like a different version of that game.

I can't wait to try more of the games from this book!

setting up shop

So, the other day I mentioned that I had ordered some new homeschool stuff.... in that stack was this...

Simply Charlotte Mason
Your Business Math Series - Pet Store

We've only been at it this week but my goodness has it been a hit so far! The grade range on this product is listed as grades 3-6... but I'm using it with my two which are 1st and 3rd grade.

They are so incredibly into it. We spent a couple of days deciding what inventory we needed to open our store. It was slow going... but Alex got lots of practice with multiplication as he extended the costs.

Then we had to make our price tags. They worked as a team. Alex did the mark-up calculations and Clara recorded them in the book....
Alex got an introduction to division through this exercise. And through our initial exercise of extending the costs, we even eased Clara into some multiplication... she's very proud of herself since she's doing multiplication too (it doesn't matter to her that the questions that we ask her help on are multiplying by 0's or 1's.... since she's good at skip counting by 5's we've been having her "help" us on those as well). It's been a very easy program to adapt to each kid's individual ability. They each have their main role.... Alex will be working more with figuring orders and Clara will be keeping track of inventory. It's so amazing to me how easily they grasp new concepts when there is an actual purpose to what they're learning.

Once the prices were figured... they excitedly asked if they could actually make a pet store. Why not? So, they've been working feverishly at setting up their shop.... they even worked on it until bedtime tonight (school on a Friday night???) :-)

Here's the progress so far....
They've taken over an old secretary that's currently hanging out in what will, at some point, be my office. On top you have some finished pet food bags (those yet to be colored are on the bottom there)..... the rest is hard to see... but the bigger wads of yarn are leashes and the smaller ones are collars.

Here's Alex showing off a newly finished dog food bag...
some dogs who are waiting for a new home....
and the cats...
After I took these photos they went digging through their stuffed animals looking for birds and rabbits to add to their store.

They absolutely cannot wait to have their first customers! I love seeing them so excited about math... I can't wait to see what else they have in mind for their store!

fractions...

Alex has hit a point with his math that he just needs to take a bit of a break. I love that with homeschooling we are able to do this. Even though he's taking a break from his math curriculum, we still "do math".

Last week I got out these two books, although we only got partway through the top one, Fractions are Parts of Things. I took the photo before we sat down to work on them and I thought we would go through them faster than we did.

To be honest, we only got through a small portion of the Fractions book (a mere fraction of it... I amuse myself sometimes).

We would have gotten through more of the book had Alex not become so obsessed with finding halves of things....

We looked around the house at windows and furniture. We built some items ourselves from their geometry tool kits and our bucket of shapes. We even photocopied some of the trickier ones out of the book and cut up the copies in order to really see the halves.

While Alex got carried away with finding halves, Clara made this....
...a flower in a vase.

So, again... not exactly what I had in mind. I had in mind that we would breeze through two books... happily absorbing some of the material and moving on. I imagined that we would work on these books together... start to finish.

Instead...

Alex didn't get exposure to all of the different fractions... but he understands half really well. He knows now that "half" isn't always obvious and that it can be found different ways.

Clara didn't stay engaged long... but she too learned quite a bit more about halves than she would have if we had gotten through the entire book in one sitting. She also explored geometric designs using our shape blocks.... creating a beautiful, intricate, symmetrical design in the base of her vase.

Sometimes the way things turn out is not just different.... but sometimes better.

math doesn't wait for monday

Yesterday while cleaning out a closet where I keep a bunch of homeschooling supplies (we're getting ready to do a big room switcharoo) Alex found these little boxes I had bought at Target back in September. They are little geometry boxes with a compass, protractor, ruler and such inside. I had bought them because they were cheap and I might need them someday. :-)

Anyway... Alex found the box and took a look inside. He was pretty intrigued by what he saw. He wanted to know what everything was and what they were for. Here I began to struggle...

2008 Me: Those are really cool geometry tools Alex. Give me some time and I'll pull some stuff together and we'll do a little unit on them this next week.

2009 Me: Here, let me tell you what they are and what they're used for. And by the way, see that K'NEX Geometry Set on the shelf? You can get that out too.


Which one do you think won out?

I stuck to my new plan, but let me tell you that it was both sooo hard and extremely easy at the same time.
The Hard Part:
It killed me to not have prepared for this. My fingers were itching... I could see the teacher's manual CD in the K'nex kit materials and it was all I could do to keep from telling him to stop everything until I could go upstairs and print stuff off. I kept seeing all we "could" do with this if I just could prepare. I eventually had to walk away.

The Easy Part:
We sprawled out in the floor together and I showed him how to make a circle with the compass and how to measure and draw angles with the protractor. No frills... nice and simple. He then got out the K'nex kit and I walked away. He came running upstairs a while later to show me what he had been doing. Using K'nex, he had made a line, line segment and a ray. He had also made various angles out of K'nex, traced them onto his paper (ack! one angle per sheet of paper... but I let that slide) and then measured them. From there we had a little discussion about acute, right and obtuse angles. We also talked about what is meant by at 180 degree turn and a 360 degree turn. He was excited and engaged! He learned more about geometry in that half and hour than he would have if I would gone the 2008 route (because, let's be honest, something else would have come up and I wouldn't have gotten around to planning the little lesson I promised).

Shortly after this, he abandoned the whole pile of stuff and was off playing with Clara. It was all he personally needed to know at that moment so he was done. Even if I would have gotten my act together, there's a really good chance his enthusiasm for geometry would have waned by the time we worked on it "during school". I might have prepared more (notice I said "might") but he wouldn't necessarily have gotten more out of it.

the rabbit trail continued

After reading my last post, a friend of mine sent me an email about another fun resource...

The Kid Who Named Pluto

(It is currently a free download at CurrClick)

I downloaded it today and looked over the stories included in it. She had specifically mentioned a chapter titled "The High Schooler Who Created an Incredible Secret Code". I printed this today and Alex and I read it aloud with Clara listening. It was definitely an inspiring story, I can't wait to read others in the book. I think it is really cool for kids to read about other kids who have done amazing things... especially in the world of academics.

Anyway... just wanted to share this free resource!

crisis averted

Yesterday we were on the verge of a total math meltdown. Alex has just started 3 digit x 2 digit multiplication in his math curriculum. He started working in his book and after several mistakes and attempts at erasing said mistakes on the first problem he was ready to quit. His page was now too messy for him to think straight when making another attempt at the problem. We were about to see tears.

Then, I had an idea... every night at dinner Alex had been asking us to give him 2 digit x 2 digit problems for him to work on for fun... he had been working these out on his white board.... so, why not let him work these new problems out on his white board?

He was receptive to this idea and started to work...
During this time, Clara was working through issues of her own...
... hair issues, that is. She was having a very bad hair day :-)

Suddenly, a hint of a smile returned...
It relaxed him so much to be working on his white board. He could write larger and mistakes completely disappeared when erased. Since his work would be gone when he moved on to the next problem, we checked each answer as he finished the problem. That way he could still look at his work and see where the mistake was before it was gone.

Once he reached the correct answer, he wrote it in his workbook...
Yesterday was another one of those days where I really appreciate the fact that we homeschool. He was so close to hating math and feeling like 3 digit x 2 digit multiplication was beyond him yesterday... but with one little change (working on a white board instead of paper) he happily breezed through the rest of his assignment.

math for 08/09

Okay.... I'm a bit behind with posting my plans for next school year (which shockingly enough, starts in a month!). So, here's the plan for math...

Clara will be starting a formal math program again. I will use Math-U-See for both kids. Clara will be starting Alpha...
and Alex will be continuing on with Gamma (he's about halfway through it)....
For mental math, we will be using....
Ray's New Primary Arithmetic

For additional challenge problems, we will be using....
Primary Challenge Math

Whew... looks like lots of math, huh? Well, it doesn't stop there. I've become math obsessed ever since joining the Living Math yahoo group. I joined it after I purchased Julie's Primary, Cycle 1, Unit 1 lesson plan to go along with Story of the World Vol. 1 which we will be using for history.

I've been picking up a few books for this along the way. I just got this book...
Mathematicians are People, Too
It looks really interesting. It's on my bedside table to start reading... but I haven't started quite yet.

I also purchased...
The History of Counting

In addition to these, I have begun a quest to track down the now out of print books from the Young Math series (thanks Tracy... lol). I received a few from used book sellers lately.

Roman Numerals
Spirals
Mathematical Games for One or Two
Graph Games

So far I have read them all except the Mathematical Games book. The explanations in them are wonderful. I can't wait until the other ones I've ordered arrive.

One last thing (okay.... there will never be a "last thing" with my seemingly unending quest to acquire math materials, but we'll go with it for the purpose of this post)... for my construction loving son, I got this...
K'nex Education: Elementary Math and Geometry Kit

I know, I know... like I said earlier... lots of math... but the plan is to incorporate it more into our daily life instead of always being a stand alone subject.

I promise not to wait another month before posting again! :-)

*** Edited to Add Another Book I Forgot ***

The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat
Seems like a very cool math story book... the kids are pretty excited about it. They're very intrigued by the "mathematical cat".

Okay... I think that's it! :-)

thank you Shannon!

I just checked out the site you recommended and it looks really cool!

In case you missed it in her comment, she recommended a site called Math Worksheet Wizard!

Looks like one I'll definitely be using!

Thanks again Shannon!

fun find today...

Okay... so it's not terrible exciting but if you need some graph paper in a pinch (we're getting ready to start a graphing project and I realized I didn't have any graph paper) this site is a very exciting find...

Free Online Graph Paper Generator

I was able to choose my paper size, line weight, square size and number of rows and columns to make my own custom graph paper for the project we're working on today!

Apparently, some days, it takes very little to make me happy! :-)

Yay Alex!

He just completed the second grade level book in Math-U-See today... tomorrow we start the third grade one!

letting math "happen"

I really need to learn to be okay with letting learning happen at times. Today was one of those days. We read a math book I got for Clara at the library (I can't remember the name, it was a Rosemary Wells book though... I'll post it tomorrow). In that book it suggested that you play "store"... pricing items, buying items, paying for them and making change. The kids really wanted to do this. So I told them after lunch if they got all of the seat work done before 2:00, they could play store.

Clara was done first so she set up the store. She made price tags with this cool punch I got from Fiskars (probably not the project they had in mind for it when they sent it to me...lol!). Once Alex was done with his work, they priced everything. They got the change bowl out... Clara put some in her metallic pink purse so she could shop and Alex kept some so he could make change.

A couple pics of Clara contemplating her purchases...

(the blue basket is her shopping basket)
Alex was selling Legos by the piece, so he's separating pieces so there's no misunderstanding over what Clara owes. :-)

They did really well... counting out money and making change. They did it several different ways.... sometimes Clara just picked out things and paid. Other times, I had her get out a dime and figure out what combination of things she wanted to get with that dime.

The reason I guess I'm saying that I have to let go and let math (or any other subject for that matter) just happen is that I get caught up in checking boxes in my teacher's guides instead of embracing some of these learning experiences. Yes, we didn't get to history today... but I'm hoping that through playing store they learned a little more about money and that they had fun doing it.

another game review...

Money Bags Game

The kids LOVE this game! They played it over and over the other day. As you travel around the board you get paid for doing different chores. You collect your money from the bank... but before you do, you spin the arrow. It will point to a space that may let you use all coins or will not allow you to use certain coins. For example... you could earn $.22 for your chore, but the spinner lands on no dimes.... so now you're using nickels to get your pay. It works great for my kids who sometimes get stuck in their comfort zone with certain coins. Clara leans towards dimes because she can count better by tens than by fives... with the spinner, she's forced out of this habit at times.

The math curriculum we use doesn't spend a whole lot of time on money, so this has been a fun way to work on that skill.