Monday, May 3, 2010

Math Monday: Random Thoughts and Homemade Number Board


Well, I had a really off week last week. I wasn't feeling well, and we had lots of random things pop up. So, needless to say, we didn't get nearly as much accomplished as I had hoped. But, I did manage to do a lot of THINKING about next year's plans.

I've gone back and forth in wondering whether to purchase a curriculum for Math or not. I've done a lot of reading up on preschool math standards, etc. while trying to make my decision. I am the kind of person that likes to have a plan to follow. I like schedules and organization...even though I have to work very hard to stay scheduled and organized.

I've looked and looked for a detailed checklist to follow for introducing math concepts, but haven't found really what I'm looking for. Everything that I have found shows that we're way ahead of the game as far as what a preschooler should know for Math. But, that doesn't help me to know where to go next. So, if anyone knows of such a list, please let me know.

As of now, we do a lot of living math. Lexy helps in the kitchen A LOT! We play games, do simple addition/subtraction, and read a lot of math books. Lexy seems to learn best this way, so I think I'm going to stick to this for next year. I'm looking into purchasing "Family Math for Young Learners" just for some ideas. Again, if anyone has used this and has an opinion, I'd love to hear.

Another thing that I did manage to accomplish last week was to make a homemade number board. I saw the idea for this here. Lexy does pretty well counting to 30, but I wanted to spend some time reviewing the teen numbers.

To make the boards, I just used cardboard and stencils. The number 10 is written 9 times, and the numbers 1-9 are written once on seperate cardboard pieces. As a review, I would say "10 and 1 makes 11. Can you make 11." She would place a 1 on top of the zero. Then, we went on down the board.






Here, she is playing teacher to her stuffed dog hitting the numbers with the hammer and saying the name.


Lexy enjoys manipulatives like this. After we use them together, I leave them out for her to play with. She likes to play teacher to Josiah or whoever will listen.

I also discivered a "new-to-me blog" last week. I spent several hours late into the night checking out The Homeschool Den. It was packed full of ideas for Math and preschool activities in general.

2 comments:

Joyful Learner said...

Thanks for the link and linking up!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I am pretty much in the same boat. Math doesn't have the same obvious "success indicator" like reading or writing. There is always something else to learn, and it's hard to say when pushing math agenda would be pushing it too far. I am pretty sure that daughter knows everything there is to know about math for K from looking at all the curriculum books. So I am also just approaching it for now via books and games and slowly trying to introduce addition and subtraction. By the way, I am sorry I still didn't make it to the post office, but I am hoping that I will mail the Bob books tomorrow morning.

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