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Math ’ Category
Monday, April 15th, 2013
It’s been a while since I talked about ED’s preschool math work. Here are some of the things we’ve been working on together during her math time.
We’ve been starting by blasting off to space… 10, 9, 8, 7… or counting down from 20. (Yes, ED is in her pjs!)
She’s practiced using tally sticks to lay out (or identify) numbers up to twenty.
I’ve also been having her identify numbers quickly such as 7 (so she identifies the set of 5 and 2):
She’s been working quite a bit on “what comes before” and “what comes after” … Sometimes I have the abacus there and remove a bead, but sometimes I just ask without any manipulatives.
We’ve been saying the months of the year together. This is something I printed out a long time ago. I got it from kidssoup a paid website great for preschool and kindergartners I cut the months out with different patters so that the answers self correct as they got older and did this on their own.
We’ve also pulled out the kitty clocks this past week to review time to the hour. She put the digital time in order first, then matched the analog clocks to the times.
If you’re interested in these two pages, you’ll need to click on both links below:
Kitty Clock Analog Clock
Kitty Clock Digital
ED has been learning to count by 5s to 100. This past week she’s been sliding the beads on the abacus over to count 5, 10, 15, 20… We’ve also been counting by 5s as we brush teeth together every night. It sounds silly to do that, but she’s really caught on quickly!!
I forgot to add that ED has also been doing a lot of free play with the pattern blocks (DD and LD often jump in on this too!). Here were some of ED’s creations one day last week:
Here’s a set of math practice sheets I made for ED this week. Feel free to download them if you’re interested:
Math Practice Sheets
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Sunday, March 24th, 2013
Last week we spent the week doing a brief unit on measurement — the imperial units. We didn’t touch on the metric system at all. I wanted the kids to come away knowing the basic facts like 16 tablespoons in a cup and 4 quarts in a gallon.
Day 1:
I brought out a number of different bottles, cups and measuring spoons and the kids and I went over what each one was — the gallon, quart, pint, cup, teaspoon and tablespoon. I made sure they all knew which was which.
Then I handed them all a worksheet that had basic questions such as: How many cups are in a pint? and How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? (Pages 1 and 2 of the Measurement Pack I made. See the photo below.)
Without too much more guidance than that, I had them all pour away. They used the pitchers to measure out pints or quarts and then poured the water from there into the gallon container.
Click on the picture or this link to download the free Measurement Pack.
Day 2: The next day we went over a few more pages of the measurement pack.
For example, they filled out the square (as a gallon) and split it into various sections to show the smaller measurements (quarts-being the 4 quarters, pints splitting the quart into 2, etc.)
Day 4: We started the day by reviewing how many quarts in a gallon; how many teaspoons in a tablespoon, etc. etc. Then we made the cute graphic. We drew the gallon (G) first and fit 4 quarts (Q) in it, followed by two pints (P) in each quart, etc. (An example is in that same packet as well.) Everyone drew their own graphic and then they hung them up somewhere in the homeschool room.
Day 5: Measurement Man
I saw this adorable activity on Mathwire.com years and years ago. I didn’t want to go over this when we lived in Australia (where they use the metric system) … and then two years zipped by before we ever tackled this unit! The kids loved this project!
We had made the head the day before while working on African masks. (More about that in another post.)
The body is the gallon, the arms and upper legs are the quarts, the forearm and shins are pints and the fingers and toes are cups.
The best thing about this project was putting on our African music and dancing all around the room. The kids had a complete blast — really getting into the music and having a ball with measurement man!
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Monday, March 4th, 2013
I think DD’s going to love this one! She’s working hard to memorize her multiplication facts and I put together different types of practice pages for the next couple of weeks. There are 8 pages. As always, it is free to download.
St. Patrick’s Day Multiplication Pack
I hope someone else find this useful! If you do, I’d love to hear from you here or over at my Facebook page.
By the way, on my facebook page I keep a running list of all the posts I’ve done. You might want to take a glance over there to see a quick synopsis of all the posts I’ve done the past few months. It’s a quick easy way to see what we’ve been up to lately.
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Sunday, March 3rd, 2013
Last week DD played many, many rounds of Fast Track. This is an idea I got years ago from Peggy Kaye’s wonderful book, Games for Math. We used the little Pokemon-themed flashcards I made for her a month or so ago… she’s working hard on those multiplication facts!
This is a homemade board with several start squares, several win spaces, go back one space, triple move, double move, lose a turn and things like that. We’ve used this same board for years!!
She used the multiplication cards below, figured out the problem and moved around the board using the higher number on the card (rather than going around 44 times!).
Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a new St. Patrick’s Day multiplication math pack for her and will be sharing those (hopefully) in the next day or so!
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Saturday, March 2nd, 2013
Did you know that tweens in the U.S. spend about $15 billion of their own money each year? Wow!
Hubby and I felt we’ve really not done a very good job on teaching the kids about money, saving and finances. We definitely want the kids to have more responsibility and practice with money while they are young… saving for trips (to have spending money) and spending their money wisely. This week, we started a short unit on money and finances in math. Some of the topics we’re covering include family money (in the broadest sense) and taxes, managing money, allowance, saving and planning. All this started when we sat down with the kids and decided to start up the kids’ allowance again a couple weeks ago. It’s a long story why we stopped (about 9 months ago), but it was important to us to have the kids start planning and saving their own money.
One thing our family decided early on (since many ‘experts’ recommend this, though not in the book I recommend below) is not to tie the kids’ allowance to their chores. They do chores simply to help the family. We also have a pool of ‘odd jobs’ that the kids can do to supplement their allowance.
I really like the way allowance and money is explained in the book, Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees. She suggests that kids divide their allowance/money into four different areas: charity, quick cash, medium-term savings and long term savings. For now, our family will combine quick cash and medium term savings as “spending money,” but I like that idea and may come back to that later. This book is chock-a-block full of great ideas and it’s a great resource.
One of the first things I did was make a very simple money diary for them to keep track of their money and spending goals. We sat down with each of the kids and showed them how to write down the money that came in (allowance or money from odd jobs) and how to deduct money they’ve spent… sort of like balancing a checkbook. You can make your own sheet to suit your kids’ needs, but his is what I made the kids:
Allowance and Finances Sheet for Kids
Then we talked a lot about money, smart spending and the importance of saving. A great place to start was with this book, Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday, that we borrowed from the library. It was a great book for talking about the importance of planning ahead and spending money wisely:
I made a discussion sheet to get the kids thinking about money. I had them answer some of the questions on their own before talking about these questions together (we talked quite a lot about needs vs. wants (the last question) and made a chart listing as many things as we could in each column:
Saving Money – Discussion Sheet
A wonderful resource I came upon is Money As You Grow. This has 20 things kids should know to live financially smart lives. It provides 20 essential, age-appropriate financial lessons AND has corresponding activities you can do with your kids from the age of 3 all the way to age 18+. It has a terrific set of ideas, no matter what the age of your child. For example, the activity suggestions for 3 year olds is
- Identify coins and their value.
- Discuss how you may value something that is free, such as playing with a friend.
- Identify items that cost money, such as ice cream, gas for the car, or clothes.
or for 7 year olds, the lesson is that it can be costly or dangerous to share information online. Be sure to visit
Money As You Grow developed by the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability in 2010. You can also print out a poster if you visit that site.
Meanwhile, I’m using a series of pamphlets from themint.org as our core (for information and read aloud materials) in this mini-unit. I’ll highlight the ones we’ve used/are using:
Where does the family money go?
The kids surprised me with the list they came up with of family expenses. They did a great job! We added more as we read through the pamphlet above:
Helping Your Family Save Money (from kids.gov):
Let’s Talk Allowances
Watching your spending, Planning, Money Diary
Spending and Saving
We also watched a virtual tour of a money factory put out by kids.gov.
Anyway, this is by no means a complete unit on finances, but it has sure sparked some good conversations about money! Actually, I have a few more things to write about — but I think I’ll save that for another post (I’m out of time for now.)
Oh and by the way, much of the information above was over ED’s (my preschooler’s) head. For her this week, we are just playing with money — “buying and selling” things with coins. I’ll try to share about that later.
By the way, we are not going to cover credit (and credit cards), though this is an important topic too and we will address that sometime in the future. If you want to talk about it, you may be interested in this pamphlet that I saw– Reaching Savings Goals and the Dangers of Credit.
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