Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Math with pom-poms

No, I haven't turned into a math cheerleader, though if it would make Kiddo interested in math, I might try it. It isn't that he is not interested, I guess, more that I haven't put in a serious, concerted effort in teaching math. We do some math everyday, but what that is varies and how much we do varies. There were a few weeks where we focused fairly intently on being able to count to 100 (and then PAST 100, which was a HUGE deal in kiddo's mind), but then we sort of backed off again. We have been using this curriculum, well at least the workbooks, since January and it has at least given us a focus, though Kiddo is only moderately interested. It focuses a great deal on greater than, less than, and equal to. Great concepts, but I think Kiddo wants some more meat to his math. The last few days, he has actually ASKED me to drill him in math. Maybe he just thinks it takes less time, so he'll get to legos/K'nex faster. But I oblige.

Today we had a little fun with the drilling. We used craft pom-poms in three colors (red, green, and white, because that is what I had) to do math with 12. We added up to 12, we subtracted from 12, we divided 12, then we did it all over again. And again. And again. Honestly, I lost track of the actual number of times we went through the drills, but we were having fun. Kiddo was finding creative ways to take the number of pom-poms away, divide them into groups, pair them, etc. I guess my math curriculum of choice should have some manipulatives to it. It really is much more fun that way!

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